Hungary set to impose 20% online gambling tax

The Hungarian government submitted a draft law for an online gambling tax to the European Commission last week. The plan is to grant five-year licences for online gambling on sports events, card games, casino games, greyhound and horse racing. The concession fee for a single type of betting would be us$ 454.267.

The organisers would be obliged to pay 20% of the net revenues and file a tax return every two weeks. On top of that every service provider will need pay as supervisory fee 2.5% of their net quarterly gambling revenues, which will be set to between us$ 454,267 and us$ 227.133. Any company applying for a licence must have at least us$ 908.533 worth of registered capital.

Continuous remote access to the servers must be ensured for the tax authority. If the company is headquartered outside the European Economic Area (EEA) it is obliged to place a secondary data storage server in Hungary. Internet service providers will be obliged to block gambling sites that operate without a licence. Any ISP that refuses to co-operate may be fined for a sum between us$ 454,267 and us$ 2.271. The good news for gamblers is that their winnings will be exempted from the personal income tax. For now.