Anton Kuchukhidze, head of the Ukrainian Gaming Council, spoke out on the topic of how critics of the legalized gambling business claim it underpays their taxes. However, he noted that the key problem is the incompleteness of the appropriate reforms.
“On the one hand, legal gambling has proven its viability as an industry and the ability to fulfill its obligations to the state even in times of war. In addition to taxes and royalties, the organizers of legal gambling spent more than a billion UAH in 2022 to help the Ukrainian state and its citizens.
Meanwhile, the reforms aimed at legalizing gambling have not been completed, since the law on taxes has not been adopted and the Unified State Online Monitoring System has not been introduced”, — writes the Head of UGC in his blog on the organization’s website.
Kuchukhidze pointed out that it is unlikely that reform will flourish while the old tax system is in place, which grossly misdefines gross gaming revenue.
The critical point is that even if 100 UAH are taxed at the rate of 19.5% in accordance with the current legislation, the player will divert to an illegal establishment.
Kuchukhidze considers it necessary to adopt the draft tax Law 2713-д and introduce a unified online monitoring system, because the strong potential of the market and the willingness of major international operators to build a business in Ukraine is confronted with the lack of sufficient legislative and regulatory conditions for the effective realization of this potential.
The Ukrainian Gaming Council has recently proposed how this can be done and hopes that there will be an appropriate dialogue and that their suggestions will be heard.
Earlier, Anton Kuchukhidze spoke about the sanctioning of PokerMatch and Parimatch in Ukraine, and the challenges that the industry has faced a year into full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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