The Russian Ministry of Finance offers to increase gambling tax

The Federal Portal for draft regulations has published a new proposal from the Ministry of Finance about increasing taxes for companies working in the sphere of gambling.

The Ministry elaborated amendments to the preceding tax initiative № 1037957-6 “On the introduction of changes to the Tax Code of the Russian Federation”. This draft was successfully passed in the first reading in the State Duma on May 20, 2016.

According to the proposed amendments, the tax amount per gambling table will increase from RUB 25-50 thousand to RUB 50-250 thousand. The tax amount will increase twofold for the following facilities:

• slot machine – to RUB 3-15 thousand;
• processing center of bookmaker company and totalizer – to RUB 50-250 thousand;
• betting shop – to RUB 10-14 thousand.

Besides that, it is offered to impose taxes on online betting processing centers within the range of RUB 2.5-3 million.

It should be noted that the amounts of gambling taxes are set by regional authorities based on the limits envisioned by the federal law. Taxable activities and assets have to be registered at their location area.

Only betting shops and totalizers are allowed to run operations on the whole territory of the country. Casinos and slot machine clubs must be located only in the specially designated zones. Today, there are five operational casinos in Russia: three in Kuban, one in Primorye, and one in Altai. One gambling hall was opened in the Kaliningrad Region. Another gambling house will be opened in Sochi on December 24.

We would like to remind that earlier the Ministry of Finance published the draft on the introduction of fees for betting shops and totalizers to support sports in the amount of 1% from quarterly revenue.