(Jamma) "The hypothesis of an increase in gaming taxes continues to be mooted, a demagogic argument whose effectiveness remains to be demonstrated, indeed" declares Massimo Passamonti, President of Confindustria Sistema Gioco Italia.
“I want to remind those who have supported - even in recent days - the need for a further aggravating fiscal intervention that the last 0,5% increase in the Preu on entertainment machines carried out in 2012 to guarantee coverage of 150 million, actually caused a loss of 300 million in lower tax revenue. Past experience should show that further raising gambling taxes is a grave mistake. We have already reached a maximum level of sustainability some time ago; not only because the desired effects would not be generated, but also because the development of illegal gambling would be favored.” continues Passamonti.
"The words of the President of the Court of Auditors Luigi Giampaolino are very clear on this subject, who in the last Report not only highlighted "the depletion of the margins offered by the so-called "voluntary revenues" but specifically remarked how the trends in tax revenues deriving from gaming in 2012 "confirm the relative saturation of the sector and suggest that the results achieved in the past will hardly be surpassed in the near future". Added to this are the very recent doubts raised by the State General Accounting Office on financial hedging interventions guaranteed by revenue generated from gaming. It is therefore quite unusual that proposals to increase the taxation on gaming come from government officials who should be well aware of the picture that has emerged in recent times. Legal gambling is a sector in which serious entrepreneurs operate and invest and which guarantees the state significant revenues. In the last two years, fiscal tightening interventions in the gaming sector have begun to seriously jeopardize the approximately 8 and a half billion in tax revenues. Continuing to depress this sector and continuously changing the rules that regulate it is not only wrong but also counterproductive and harmful to the economy of the country of which the gaming sector is a full part as an active and certainly not a passive element", concludes Passamonti .
Confindustria Sistema Gioco Italia is the federation of the gaming and entertainment industry set up in 2011 with the aim of strengthening the representation capacity of this important industrial sector.
