Irish casino news looks at tax changes in the UK

Here we are at Easter weekend 2014 and there is not much happening in the Irish casino news except of course in the poker world where the Irish Open Poker is being held in Dublin and this casino news site will report on that in due course. All the major casino news recently has been around the UK budget and the fact that the Government there is still keen to crack down on the FOBTs (Fixed Odds Betting Terminals) which are found in the bookmakers shops in that country. In the first instance the number of machines in any single shop was restricted but casino news stories seem to suggest that the bookmakers have found a way round that by opening more shops but now in the budget the tax on these machines is going to be increased from 20% to 25%. Needless to say, the betting industry in the UK is up in arms about this and say that increasing tax will hamper their ability to support horse racing. Casinos.ie does find it a bit strange that a tax rise is seen as an answer to problem gambling on the machines. This is not an issue for online casinos and nor is it an issue in Irish bookmakers where that sort of machine is illegal anyway but the noise that is coming out suggests that the machines are a major profit generator which considering that most games are in fact Roulette is a bit strange as at an online casino playing roulette has one of the better chances of returning a profit. It could be therefore that the software running these machines is not the same as the random number generator which runs roulette at online casinos. There was however also good casino news for bingo operators when the tax will be cut in half from 20% to 10% but again Irish online casinos are not affected.