At the sitting of March 6, the National Assembly debated in the second reading the amendments and addenda proposed by MP Hayk Sargsyan to the Tax Code and the related laws.
It is proposed to increase the tax for online casinos and bookmaker activities twice.
“We will have about 13 billion AMD of additional state revenues annually,” the author of the legislative package noted. The financial burden will increase year by year, and this tool will make it possible to solve the issue of the gambling operator. According to Hayk Sargsyan, the opportunities to play online casinos through the operator will be limited, and in the case of certain social groups and civil servants, a ban will be imposed altogether.
“A significant part of the suicides in the world, including in Armenia in recent years, are due to gambling, and the army, which is a mirror of our society, cannot remain untouched by this. More than half of the suicides in the army in 2024 are a result of gambling,” such statistical data was introduced by the key rapporteur.
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In 2024, more than 811 billion AMD was deposited into online casino accounts. “If these funds were to enter the economy, the gross domestic product would grow by 10-15%, and state revenues – by 7.34%,” Hayk Sargsyan stated and spoke today about not banning the activities of casinos and online casinos in Armenia by law. “I am going to do everything possible so that our state has that technical ability, after which we will make new legislative amendments and limit this vicious phenomenon as much as possible,” the MP emphasized and thanked the Head of Government for supporting this important initiative.
The Deputy Chair of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs Babken Tunyan underlined that the amount of the tax burden originally envisaged in the second reading procedure has been reduced several times, since the tax must be logical and cannot be greater than the income of these companies.
The Deputy Chair of the Committee emphasized the importance of having a gaming operator by the end of the year. According to Babken Tunyan, the regulations should be such that the sector does not have super profits and at the same time not be so strict that people transfer their financial flows to dubious foreign websites and suffer greater losses. He added that the initiative solves the problem of fair taxation, not the problem of preventing the spread of gambling. The Deputy Chair of the Committee suggested voting in for it.
During the first to the second reading, the Government proposed to increase the burden on the gaming industry through the logic of continuously increasing state duty rates. The Deputy Minister of Finance Arman Poghosyan informed this and reminded that the state fee is designed to obtain the right to accept bets based on the logic of quotas. By the proposal of the government, the state duty will increase twice from April 1, and then from the beginning of the year the increase will be continuous at the current state duty rate, until the creation of a gaming industry monitoring centre and the introduction of the operator institute.
In the Q&A session the deputies also highlighted the role of the gaming sector in the solution of the sphere, spoke about the possibility of banning the gambling business, its risks and their management. It was proposed to debate the issue of reviewing the profit tax rate.
Presenting the viewpoint of the Armenia Faction, Tadevos Avetisyan opined that with such solutions the problems of the sector are not regulated. In behalf of the Civil Contract Faction Babken Tunyan clarified in his speech that although the law on the gaming operator was adopted last year, the operator should be introduced this year. According to him, the state should take every step and limit the spread of betting, at least with imperative options, in the shortest possible time.
In his final speech Hayk Sargsyan touched upon the MPs’ concerns.
As a result of voting, the legislative package was adopted in the second reading and fully.
Covering the agenda, the National Assembly ended the work of the regular sittings.
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