Most of the betting industry is urging the chancellor not to double slot machine duty to raise up to £460m more a year
Gambling industry kingpins are fuming about reports that the chancellor, John Healey, is considering increasing taxes on high-street slot machines in his first budget.
The influential Social Market Foundation thinktank, the most vocal advocate for a rise in machine games duty (MGD), from 20% to 40%, thinks the measure could raise between £275m and £460m annually, on top of the roughly £610m collected last year.
Its proposal is likely to meet with sympathy from Andy Burnham, a vocal and repeated critic of slot machines, who has already moved to tighten licensing laws so that gambling firms find it harder to open up new shops.
The billionaire owner of Betfred, Fred Done, is among industry bosses who say such a policy would force shop closures, cost jobs and ultimately fail in its objective, depriving the Treasury of taxes.
But not every figure in the gambling world agrees. Stewart Kenny, the co-founder of Paddy Power who has become a critic of his erstwhile industry, accused Done of “scaremongering”.
So who’s right? It’s complicated …
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