The Government of Georgia plans to increase taxes for owners of online casinos in Georgia, - according to Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili.
As the PM notes, the Ministry of Finance is working on the draft bill, which will increase the tax for online casinos on the first stage, ban advertising, raise the age limit for users to 25, and on the second stage, onling casions will be completely banned.
"One billion 500 million GEL flow out of the country through online casinos, our citizens, young people play in online casinos every day and lose money. This sum amounts to 1 500 million.
I have talked about this with our economic team and we think that on the first stage the Minister of Finance will present a legislative initiative to increase taxes for the owners of online casinos and the vast majority of them are foreign companies. Unfortunately, the money of our citizens is flowing abroad. This is 1 500 million and 99% of this is the poor population who are not working. We think we should increase taxes, ban advertising, as well as raise the threshold to 25 years, on the second stage online casinos should be banned altogether, I am ready to talk about it openly. We will work actively with the parliament", - Irakli Gharibashvili said.
The gambling sector pays taxes to both local governments and the central budget. For example, Tbilisi's revenue from gambling is planned to be GEL 50 million next year.
As for the amounts paid to the central budget, as of 2020, it was distributed as follows:
VAT - GEL 20,616,083
Profit tax - GEL 131,107,914;
Income tax - GEL 61,251,180;
Property tax (including land) - GEL 1,213,494;
Other - GEL 3,996,181;
Total - GEL 210,192,490.
