It is not uncommon that the governments of countries consider amusement and entertainment channels provided for the people as “milking cows” for tax revenue. But if it is over-done, ironically they will be killing the cows themselves and many governments have already learnt this lesson the hard way.
In line with the above tendency, the Government of United Kingdom, which has been seeing the flourishing of Bingo Games in all places of the British soil for over 4 decades, it seems, has chosen to extract the maximum revenue to the exchequer from Bingo Clubs. The Bingo Games Industry in U.K. has been resisting this and has been submitting representations to the authorities in everyway possible.
Actually what happens is any tax levy on Bingo games is only passed on to the unwary Bingo players, by enhancement of the cost of tickets overall, in addition to taxes cutting a portion of the prize money won by a lucky winner.
The latest addition to the already heavy burden is VAT – Value Added Tax – on gambling machines installed at the Bingo Clubs, as side attractions in between Bingo plays. The Bingo Game Industry unanimously expressed their concern over this and expected this extra weight to be removed in the budget proposals in March. But this has been negated and on the contrary the authorities are proposing to increase license duty on such machines. This is a round-about method of making the Bingo players shell out extra money.
Bingo Association of U.K. is vehemently opposing the move, quoting examples that already more than 43 Bingo Clubs have closed their shutters. If the latest third party survey is any indication, another 108 Clubs are running the risk of closure.
Really a trying time for Bingo Game Industry in general and Bingo Clubs in U.K. in particular.
