The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

THE government’s Gaming Amendment Bill 2019 proposes a winnings tax and returns the Gaming Board to a regulatory body with power to shut web shops, search them and seize documents that may prove noncompliance with laws. According to Attorney General Carl Bethel yesterday, this winnings tax will be imposed at a rate of five percent under $1,000 and at 7.5 percent over that amount.

He said the amendment sets up a structure of gaming taxation that the government believes will withstand the test of time. “In short, the bill once enacted will impose the winnings tax that’s on lottery games,” Mr Bethel said after the amendment was tabled at Parliament.

“The bill also sets up the framework for the scale of taxation of the internet based gaming which is like 90 percent of the market in our domestic gaming sector. So the sliding scale (between) 15 and 17.5 percent (with) $24m being the boundary between the two, that is going to be imposed. Also the winnings tax below and over $1,000 will also be imposed in that bill.

“So what the bill will do is to in our view for the foreseeable future set up a structure of gaming taxation that we believe will withstand the test of time. We worked very hard on it, did a lot of research, did a lot of consultation as the best way to structure these taxes and the way to impose them. So this bill will now reflect that.

“The point is once you have an agreed (method) of taxation, then should the need arise at any future time, government has great flexibility after appropriate industry discussions to take it up a bit or take it down a bit as the needs would arise.”

Asked by The Tribune if this was something operators were comfortable with, Mr Bethel explained that the challenge was to find balance in an industry. “The Bahamian people have to understand that the nature of the industry that we have in the country today is small but it is diverse within its smallness, so you have two very large players one of course being the giant of all the players that one of them and there’s another one but not anywhere near the size of that big one.

“Everybody else - the other six or seven of them - are every small in terms of their turnover and their size and the great difficulty in determining how to apply a tax is how do you apply it fairly when you have two large and the rest small in terms of turn over, that’s the first problem.

“The second problem is that there is a further subdivision in the industry. At least one player is 90 percent only in lottery games so there are questions on how to avoid disproportionate impact on one while also spreading the burden across the industry.”

The amendment means the Gaming Board will be given the teeth it needs to regulate gaming houses. According to Mr Bethel, the board’s functions were changed under the former Christie administration.

“We’re creating a new investigatory arm of the Gaming Board designed to go after those persons who would seek to set up unlawful lottery based type gaming. People are now using iPads, cell phones and other computer access to place numbers bets on the internet and so the bill is going to create a framework where the investigatory agency within the Gaming Board is able to pursue illegal operatives particularly on the numbers side and those who are offering illegal internet gaming based sites etcetera to go after their servers, to go after the internet service providers to cause the internet service providers to shut down their access to the internet. In other words to disrupt wherever possible and at all cost all illegal operators.

“So the bill is also to empower the Gaming Board to do this. (It) reverses the policy in the former Gaming Act, which was that the Gaming Board only have jurisdiction over licenced gaming operators.

“This bill will give the Gaming Board the old jurisdiction it once enjoyed before the last government legalised domestic gaming, which is jurisdiction over any and all gambling operations that are either licenced or unlicensed in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.”

As a result Mr Bethel said the board will need to beef up its staff compliment.

Parliament meets today to begin debate on the amendment.