GORDON BROWN: 'Taxing the betting industry to support our children won't be a gamble'

Daily Mirror

21 hours ago

Gordon Brown says 'with the public finances tight and children hungry, there is an obvious fix: use the massively undertaxed profits of the gambling industry to lift 500,000 children out of poverty'
A poor bookie is hard to find. A child living in poverty is difficult to miss.
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But right now more than 4.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty and the numbers are rising by up to 100,000 every year. I saw extreme poverty when I was growing up in an industrial town in Scotland hit by unemployment and I am sad I am seeing such deep poverty again stalk our country's children.
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By 2030 the first experiences of 5 million of our kids will be to be ill-fed, poorly clothed and badly housed. That's why today, in an exclusive article in the Mirror, the leaders of 15 anti poverty charities from the Save the Children to the food bank charity The Trussell Trust have called for an end to the Tory two child rule that keeps hundreds of thousands of children in poverty
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There is one other thing that is rising on a similar trajectory in this country – the soaring profits of the gambling industry. The gambling and betting industry is worth £11.5 billion a year and that sum rises year after year – almost as quickly as child poverty rises.
Yet in Britain, they operates in one of the lowest tax regimes in the West. They pay less tax than our oil and gas companies. Less tax than our car manufacturers. Less tax than our cutting edge tech companies.
So with the public finances tight and children hungry, there is an obvious fix: use the massively undertaxed profits of the gambling industry to lift 500,000 children out of poverty.
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The tax on online casino profits in the Netherlands stands at 40%. In Austria it is 54% per cent. Even in the US state of Delaware - seen as an international tax haven – the tax rate is 57%. Yet in the UK the tax rate is almost a third of that American level - just 21%. Half of that in liberal Amsterdam.
In the last ten years remote gambling yields have risen by more than 40% – and that's after inflation but remote gambling operators pay a fraction of their profits in tax . Under the Tories they were allowed to take the government for a ride as much as they do their punters.
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The customers of these gambling giants are in the UK but many owners locate themselves in places where they can dodge tax and avoid paying the corporation tax your employer pays which limits your wages. Neither do they pay the VAT you pay on what you buy.
Matching the tax rate on remote gambling here to that of low-tax Delaware on would raise not far off £2 billion a year. Matching it on in-person slot machines would bring in almost another £1 billion.
And we can apply this levy without touching bingo or any lotteries or the horse racing industry. And the extra cash raised would mean the government could start to lift half a million children out of poverty.
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A third of the cost of a pint is tax. Two thirds of the cost of whisky is tax. Three quarters of the cost of a pack of cigarettes is tax. Yet online gambling giants get away with paying just over 20% in tax on their profits. It is unequal, unfair and unjust.
Gambling will not build a brighter future for our children. But taxing it properly might just get them properly nourished. Decent clothes. A warm bed. And the full stomachs that let them fill their brains in school.
Taxing the betting industry to support our children won't be a gamble. It will be an investment in their future. One where everyone wins.