Online Casino News and Gambling News

March 8, 2009 - French Online Betting Tax Fixed

French Budget Minister, Eric Woerth, presented a draft legislation at a press conference in Paris this week for the regulation of the French online gaming market. The new bill will now be reviewed this month by the Council of Ministers before they submit it to Parliament in the summer. The law will be coming into force on January 1st 2020.

Once the new law is in force it will mean that all online gambling operators will be subject to a tax of 7.5% of the revenues on sports and horse betting as well as 2.5% on all online poker revenues. Mr. Woerth has calculated that that this new tax rate will have a neutral impact on state revenues. He maintains that contributions from online gaming should be approximately five billion Euros.

A penalty has been set at a maximum of three years in prison as well as a forty five thousand Euro fine for all providers of any illegal online casino gambling, those not in possession of a French license.

French gaming operators will welcome today's announcement as many of them feared that there would be further delays in liberalizing the online gaming market. Partouche and Barriere, who are amongst many other leading domestic brands and who have operational online gaming business, are awaiting legal entry to the French market. The market is estimated to be worth between two to three billion Euros, according to Minister Woerth.

Today's announcement ends the monopolies of Francaise Des Jeux and PMU, who have both invested heavily in their online operations and marketing in the past few months.

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