Online-Casinos.com – The laws of the land are about to change in the United Kingdom regarding online gambling licenses and the taxes collected. The proposed new regulations will require all online gambling companies operating in the United Kingdom’s jurisdiction irrespective of the location of their base of operations will have to obtain a U.K. Gambling Commission license.
On top of that detail, there will be a new point of consumption tax of 15% raked from the operator’s profits, and a pledge by the companies outside the U.K. to immediately inform the U.K. Gambling Commission of any suspicious behavior by customers they serve.
The process of passing into law anything new takes a long time as anyone following this process will attest too. This change for the U.K.’s gambling industry is the first since the passing of the Gambling Act 2005. The three separate readings, a committee stage and a report stage must be covered in the House of Commons. Then the proposed new set of rules goes to the House of Lords for a second go round. Now the U.K. Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill 2013-2014 has passed safely through the House of Lords Committee Stage without a single amendment being approved.
After the approval from the House of Lords the legislation is then passed for Consideration of Amendments before finally reaching Royal Assent, after which it is passed into law and implemented.
The bill was put through the scrutiny of the Committee and surprisingly the 20 amendments put forth by various members of the U.K.’s politicians were struck down without argument. Amendments included the ‘power to extend the horse race betting levy to overseas bookmakers,’ ‘consultation on and implementation of self-exclusion for remote gambling,’ and ‘credit and financial institutions must not accept payments to and from unlicensed remote gambling organizations,’ these were all dismissed by the members of the House of Lords.
