Illegal Online Gambling Becoming a Problem in South Africa?
9 years ago
16 Jan
The legalization of online poker and online gaming in general in South Africa has been a burning topic in that country lately and just days ago a new bill was proposed concerning the issue. Now, just days later The Casino Association of South Africa has issued a warning to its country’s regulators about the impact illegal online gambling is having on the overall tax revenue of the country.
The Online gambling Bill has been in the works for years, but the brick and mortar lobby along with a number of politicians opposed to online gambling have been stopping one from coming into effect in full. While licenses for online gaming can in theory be issued, none have been issued to date. This of course does not stop players from accessing other, foreign sites and playing their favorite games there.
The government has been reluctant about implementing a proper online gambling bill much due to their fears it would propel problem gambling but they have been unable to ban other, international operators from offering games to their citizens.
Themba Ngobese, who serves as the chief executive of CASA has reminded the government of the vast sums of tax money it is missing out on by not regulating this market and has warned them that players are still accessing the services they want, only tax free.
Ngobese also warned of domestic online gaming operations disguised as internet cafes and entertainment lodges and offer illegal online gambling. Concerning the tax revenue that is being taken out of the countries coffers by these illegal operations Ngobese said:
We always make an estimate and say, look, our gaming tax, which excludes VAT and corporate tax as of the end of the year at March 2014, was just about R2.2 billion (€161.5 million/$189.9 million). If they do 5% of what we do, then the country and coffers are losing R110 million in terms of gaming tax, which is a big figure.
Ngobese is naturally concerned as the illegal gambling is hurting the business of land based casinos as well as state revenue and nothing is being done to protect either. The CASA are lobbying the state to do something about the illegal establishments and potentially adopt a bill to legalize online gaming and level the playing field, but this is unlikely to happen in the near future.
As things stand today, we do not have even a bill that has been presented in parliament for consideration – that’s the situation that we stand with. We are aware of a bill that is due to be presented at some stage by the opposition party in the National Assembly, but that has not yet happened, unfortunately. Until it is legislated, stay away from it and, of course, if it's legalized, then it's a fair playing field and everyone should be able to participate in it.
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