The Swedish Trade Association for Online Gambling (BOS) has called on the Swedish government to dismiss ATG’s proposal to increase taxes on online casino but carve-out horseracing .
In October 2023, Sweden’s government proposed raising gross gaming revenue from 18% to 22% and the change came into effect on 1 July 2024.
At the start of 2024, ATG CEO Hasse Lord Skarplöth called for differentiated rates for sports betting and horseracing operators compared to online casinos.
He reiterated this call in the wake of the UK’s Autumn Budget in November, which saw horseracing betting protected from the hike on remote general betting duty from 15% to 25%.
Under his proposal, horseracing duty would revert to 18% while other taxes would increase another four percentage points to 26%.
However, in a letter to the ministry of finance, BOS warned mirroring the UK in Sweden would “counteract the primary goal of Swedish gambling policy”.
The letter has been co-signed by several leading industry execs, including Entain CEO Stella David and evoke boss Per Widerström.
LeoVegas Group CEO Mattias Wedar, Betsson chief Pontus Lindwall and ComeOn Group boss Juergen Reutter also backed the plea from BOS.
The letter read: “The level of the tax rate is certainly not the only factor that determines whether the consumer chooses to play within the Swedish licensed market or outside it.
“However, it is an important factor, especially for high-volume players, as the tax rate has a decisive impact on the price of the gaming product.
“High volume players tend to have greater knowledge and interest in the price of the product than low-volume players.
“ATG’s argument for lowering the tax on horse betting and raising it on online casinos, among other things, is that online casinos are a riskier product than horse betting, and that differentiated tax rates should encourage consumers to choose horse betting to a greater extent. This argument is at best schematic.
“The data available clearly shows that for risk players, all games are risky games, including horse betting.
“In addition, ATG argues that horse betting plays an important role as a financier of the horse industry in general.
“This may of course be the case with regard to the horse industry, but here we would like to emphasise again that this is not the goal of the gambling policy (let alone that the government may of course have goals in other contexts for the horse industry).
“The goal of gambling policy is primarily consumer protection. It would be foolish to lower taxes in the gambling segment, horse betting, which has no problem with channelling, at the expense of the gambling segment that has major problems with channelling, online casinos.”
BOS represents operators and suppliers including Entain, Paf, Betsson, Playtech and evoke.
The post BOS urges Swedish government to swerve horseracing tax carve-out first appeared on EGR Intel.
Trade body calls on ministry of finance to ignore ATG CEO Hasse Lord Skarplöth’s proposal of raising gambling taxes to 26% while decreasing horseracing tax to 18%
The post BOS urges Swedish government to swerve horseracing tax carve-out first appeared on EGR Intel.