Lawmaker seeks extra 10% tax in gambling industry

Member of Parliament Hayk Sargsyan from the Civil Contract faction has introduced legislation seeking to set an extra 10% turnover tax in the gambling industry.

Speaking at the plenary session of parliament on Tuesday, the lawmaker said that the volume of gambling businesses, including betting sector, has abruptly increased in the last 13 years.

“In 2010, the turnover volume was 35 million dollars, and the tax ratio was 2,6 million dollars or 7,2%, but in 2010-2023 the volume grew more than 440 times and in 2023 the volume was 15,8 billion dollars, while the collected taxes stood at 67 million dollars or just 0,4% of the volume,” Sargsyan said.

The MP said that the series of legislative initiatives introduced over the course of the past few years, which were supposed to cut the gambling volumes, failed to do so.

“In 2019, the law banned betting activities in offices. The gamblers shifted to the online platform where they started to waste a hundredfold more money, while the betting industry cut their expenses for maintaining offices, paying salaries, and paying subsequent taxes. In 2019, the law banned the advertisement of bookmaking activities. This step also cut the millions of dollars in expenses by the bookmaking companies int terms of taxes and duties,” the MP added, emphasizing that this step enabled the current industry to maintain an absolute monopoly.

He said the legislative initiatives for increasing taxes in the industry haven’t been sufficient.

He cited international experience of at least 10% turnover taxes in the sector. 

Sargsyan said that the Prime Minister has expressed support for his initiative.

“Some of our colleagues at the government and parliament had disapproved this bill, saying that at this phase the increase of the tax burden would be inappropriate. We’ve had a series of meetings with our colleagues at the government, and two meetings were held with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The Prime Minister has supported the initiative of increasing the tax burden of gambling and bookmaking activities, and he proposed that the changes take effect immediately after adoption of the bill and not after six months,” the MP added.

The Civil Contract party legislators have been trying to tackle the gambling addiction issue for many years through various legislative initiatives.

Earlier in January, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan expressed concern over the statistics.