Charles Allen, the chair of the British Horseracing Authority, paid tribute on Wednesday to “everyone who has played their part across the sport” after the budget announcement by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, that the rate of duty for betting on horse racing will remain unchanged at 15%. Confirmation that racing would be exempt from tax […]
Online casinos and bookmakers will pay billions of pounds more in tax under a steep rise in duties levied on their takings from British gamblers. Shares in UK gambling firms began tumbling even before Rachel Reeves announced the change in her budget, after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – which assesses the likely impact […]
Gambling companies don’t lose very often but nor are they usually playing a game of poker against the chancellor of the exchequer. At next week’s budget, Rachel Reeves is widely expected to announce an increase in the duties that bookies and casinos pay to the Treasury, ending months of speculation and frenzied lobbying designed to […]
Betfred has said it would close all 1,287 of its high street betting shops if Rachel Reeves raises taxes on the industry (Betfred says gambling tax rise in budget will force it to shut all its UK shops, 19 October). What further encouragement can she need?John SaxbeeHaverfordwest, Pembrokeshire As great as Prunella Scales’s character was, […]
The chancellor should ignore “scaremongering” by gambling firms and raise taxes on the £11bn sector’s most harmful products, MPs on the influential Treasury select committee have said. In a scathing report, delivered as Rachel Reeves’s Treasury team is finalising her second budget as chancellor, MPs accused the sector of hiding its more “insidious” products behind […]