Tax Code

Wednesday, 1 June 2016

Questions (95)

Pearse Doherty

Question:

95. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Finance the revenue generated by applying certain measures (details supplied). [13889/16]

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Written answers

I am informed by the Revenue Commissioners that Betting Duty of 1% is levied on both traditional and online (remote) betting, with the latter being in place since 1st August 2015. As there is not yet a full year's data available for online betting, the value of a full year has been estimated and the expected yield is shown in the table below.

-	Traditional Bet	Remote Bet	Total
-	€m	€m	€m
Full Year @ 1%	27.4	19.7	47.1
Full Year @ 3%	82.3	59.0	141.3
Additional Yield	54.9	39.3	94.2

The incidence of the Duty will be the same whether the duty is paid directly by the bookmaker or collected by the bookmaker from customers and paid to Revenue; as such it does not affect the costing and, regardless of how the duty is applied in law, it is borne in practice by consumers.

In relation to the level of increase in duty proposed by the Deputy, I would be reluctant to proceed with a 200% increase on the current rate because of the general compliance implications of an increase of this magnitude, and I think it is particularly important that taxation of remote betting, which commenced on 1 August last, is given a reasonable period in which to settle before considering such an increase.