Bookies Tax Punters

DESPITE what many consider a prohibitive licence fee of $l million, the three bookmakers have reopened. They have, however, introduced a new tax on punters to try to recover the extra half a million, the licence was previously half a million

Under the new plan, punters are required to pay a tax of 10 per cent on all amounts they bet. In other words, if they bet $10 on a horse, they have to pay the bookmaker an extra $1 in tax. If the bookmaker’s total bets are about $30 000 a day this will net him $3 000 a day and about $900 000 in a year. He would thus succeed in passing the entire licence fee on to the punter.

The question is whether the punter can or will bear this additional imposition. When the first big increase of licence fees was introduced, the bookmaker sought to recover this from the punter by shading the odds paid to the punter. They reduced the starting price by 10 per cent.

If a horse started at 10-1, they paid 9-1 on it. Many punters felt this was an excessive imposition and had already made winning virtually impossible. Now the additional tax on the bet drives the nail in the coffin. They feel the bookmakers will recover more than the tax.

Observers feel that the government duty is unconscionably high (about $3 000 per working day) and can only be interpreted as an attempt to close the bookmakers. Indeed, they may only survive if the already hard-pressed punter will bear this huge additional burden. First reports indicate that betting has decreased a lot as punters consider the new 10 per cent tax prohibitive and unfair and, that the shaded odds are already adequate to cover the bookmaker.