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Uganda’s parliament has approved plans to increase the gambling tax rate from 20 to 30 percent after assuring that sports betting will remain taxed at 20 percent.
The new tax will be applied to the total amount of money staked minus player winnings for all gambling activities other than betting, which will see its 20 percent tax rate applied in the same way.
Parliament passed the Lotteries and Gaming (Amendment) Bill 2023 on May 4, with the changes coming into force on July 1.
Jane Pacutho, deputy chairperson of the Finance Committee, presented a report on the bill ahead of the parliament’s vote, which argued that many existing gambling products are difficult to collect tax from due to their multiple “start and stop points”.
"Casinos are using the end-of-day reconciliations to account for withholding tax which would only be on the days when they have made losses. Such an occurrence is highly unlikely for a casino because betting/gaming companies are always winning,” the committee report states.
The report stressed the need to change the current policy and ensure that a tax is only imposed on winnings and not the staked amounts.
“To plug this revenue leakage, the measure proposes to remove the 15 percent withholding tax on payments for winnings of gaming and instead increase the gaming tax to a rate of 30 percent across the gaming sector,” Pacutho said.
The amendments were published on March 30 in the Uganda Gazette by Matia Kasaija, the minister of finance, planning and economic development.
The bill is just one of several tax bills in 2023 that has been proposed by the government in recent months.
The Ugandan government is hoping to increase its revenue from SHS25.5trn (€6.23bn) or 13.4 percent of GDP, currently projected in the 2022/2023 financial year, to SHS29.3trn or 14 percent of GDP in the 2023/2024 financial year.
Speaking to Uganda’s parliament on April 20, 2022, Keefa Kiwanuka, chairperson of the Committee on Finance, said the gambling sector contributed SHS43.4bn (€11.4m) to the economy, “notwithstanding limited resources for monitoring gaming activities country-wide”.
