Bulgaria bemoans lost gambling revenue
Posted by Bev Freeman on 14 Aug 2009 at 13:08
Officials in Bulgaria have warned the country is losing millions of lev each year to online gambling operations based abroad.
Low Tax.net said the Bulgarian gambling act says all gambling operations being run in Bulgaria have to be licensed, a rule which is being broken by foreign online operators, according to the Bulgarian Gambling Commission or BGC.
According to representatives of the group, dozens of companies have been fined already for not holding a licence in Bulgaria.
Figures from the BGC say that illegal online gambling sites total turnover in 2006 stood at $363 million from Bulgaria, with this more than doubling by 2008, and expected to be more than treble that in 2009.
According to Low Tax .net, figures on the yearly gambling turnover for the Balkans, home to around 130 million people, put the figure at about €4.5 billion per year. Most of that comes from internet gaming.
Officials have long warned that online gambling operations in Bulgaria break a wide number of laws there, including the corporate income tax and the law on measures against money laundering.
Furthermore, claims by the BGC chairman, Dimitar Terziev, that online gambling rules will be changed, have not yet been backed up.
Tax in Bulgaria is a hot issue following the decision by the EU to freeze aid to the country due to concerns over tax evasion and fraud.
Co-operation between agencies has also been stepped up, with the national revenue agency and the customs agency signing an agreement to try to meet targets set down by the ministry of finance to cut revenues lost through tax evasion.
The police and tax authorities have also recently promised to tackle cross border tax evasion. This issue alone is thought to cost Bulgaria billions each year.
