German slot players shunning the new gambling tax?

[jasonuk]

While replying to this thread, I was curious how things were going with the updated gambling tax in Germany.

It took a bit of effort to find the data source, but have pulled out the numbers for the past 7-8 quarters and they make for pretty grim reading... although of little surprise to anybody. As always, errors are my own.

Source:

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(Germany Federal Ministry of Finance)
For each quarter, look under Rennwett- und Lotteriesteuer (Race Betting and Lottery Tax) and then subsection virtuelle Automatensteuer (Virtual Vending Machine Tax, which appears to be their definition of slot machines) - the tables run across 4 pages so look for the total numbers (Bundesgebiet)

Period	Rennwett- und Lotteriesteuer (Total)	virtuelle Automatensteuer (Slots)
Q2 2023	€614.593m	€68.517m
Q1 2023	€666.105m	€80.128m
Q4 2022	€610.925m	€78.774m
Q3 2022	€596.133m	€95.464m
Q2 2022	€661.034m	€114.777m
Q1 2022	€701.378m	€140.683m
Q4 2021	€700.319m	€156.849m
Q3 2021	€516.004m	€32.726m*

* Q3 2021 was a transition period, most operators had to be compliant by October 2021. Included for reference but not particularly useful in this context.

So if we take Q4 2021 as a baseline:

• double-digit quarter-on-quarter declines have been observed in five of the six quarters - Q1 2023 being the outlier at a modest +1.7%
• the first year-on-year numbers are horrendous, with drops approaching 50% between Q4 2021 and Q4 2022
• even without the honeymoon of the first two quarters, Q2 2023 is 40% down on Q2 2022, and 28% down on Q3 2022.

Excluding slots from the total, the remaining take has been fairly steady (€483m, €543m, €561m, €546m, €501m, €532m, €586m and €546m) - so at least for now it's not an industry-wide problem, but I can imagine other sectors like poker will start to struggle over time - a 5.3% tax on all wagers starts to erode bankrolls very quickly!