Gambling Tax Cuts Passed In Spanish Budget

By Brian Cullingworth, Last updated Jul 6, 2018

Government moves to attract more foreign operators

There was good news from Spain this week, where parliamentarians passed the 2018 budget containing significant reductions in taxation on gambling in a move to attract more operators, especially in the online environment, to the market.

The cuts to tax rates based on GGR, include a 5 percent reduction on fixed-odds sports betting, other fixed-odds betting, fixed-odds horseracing, betting exchanges and other games including online casino games, bingo and poker from 25 percent to 20 percent.

Pari-mutuel sports betting tax is cut from 22 percent of GGR to 20 percent, bringing it into line with the rate set for state run sports betting operations.

However, tax on pari-mutuel horseracing and pool betting is being increased from 15 percent to 20 percent of GGR.

Online gambling tax rates for the autonomous Spanish territorial gambling centres of Melila and Ceuta on the North African coast remain unchanged at 10 percent of GGR.

The more reasonable tax rates, which have been the subject of debate since April this year, will be welcomed by operators and are expected to achieve the regulator’s aim of attracting more operators to a promising market.

In 2017 the online gambling sector delivered revenues of Euro 560 million, with analysts predicting a continued upward trend for online gambling and betting revenue to between Euro 1 billion to Euro 1.5 billion over the next three to five years.

---