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Uruguayan Senator Sergio Botana has demanded that the overdue regulation of the last article of the country’s budget law include an increase of the tax on gambling from 0.75 to 1 percent.
Botana made the proposal before Congress on July 12, along with several other tax increases to fund various endeavours.
During the discussion of the Law of Rendering of Accounts, as it is formally known, Botana asked for more funding for the Technical University of Uruguay (UTEC) and asked to raise the equivalent of $400m for sports, to be overseen by the Uruguayan Olympic Committee.
Botana plans to do this by establishing a new farming goods sales tax on cannabis of 1.5 percent, a 1 percent tax on the use of cell phone lines, eliminating tax exemptions for beverage manufacturers, raising the excise tax on cigarettes and raising the tax on gambling from 0.75 percent to 1 percent.
The senator justified the cell phone proposal by deeming it "logical because the telephone has become a competitor of sports", in terms of entertainment.
Botana has not yet submitted the paperwork to Congress with the specific details, but the 0.75 percent tax was first levied in 2017 and applies to the gambling turnover (bets placed by players) on approved casinos, racetracks, sports-betting halls and such venues.
The gambling industry in the country is making a slow recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, as it is largely based around hotel-casino complexes in its wealthy Maldonado department, where the beaches of Punta del Este attract the wealthy from around Latin America and Europe during the Christmas season.
Ignacio Sarmiento, the CEO of Enjoy Punta Del Este, told local paper El Pais: “There are a series of factors that alter the recovery, such as connectivity. Airlines have not recovered the connectivity they had prior to the pandemic; they are flying with less frequency and to fewer cities because they are looking for more profitable routes.”
Despite this, Sarmiento emphasised that Enjoy intends to capitalise on the region’s reputation for drawing international high-rollers, with plans to organise poker tournaments with prize pots of US$3m.
“We are competing with the casinos of Monte Carlo and Las Vegas … [but] tourism is going to take some time to recover as we knew it before the pandemic.”
Online gambling is not yet legal in Uruguay, except for online sports betting and lottery games offered by the state-run lottery. Legislation was introduced in 2021 to allow online casino games managed by casinos in the country.
