BREAKING: Gordon Brown, the former New Labour prime minister and the man credited with saving the world economy during the 2008 financial crisis, has thrown his considerable political weight behind calls to raise iGaming taxes by £3.2 billion (US$4.28bn) to combat growing UK child poverty.
Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007 under Tony Blair and leader of the Labour Party and prime minister from 2007 to 2010, today publicly supported a report by the left-wing Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank, which argues that higher taxes on slots and iGaming would lift an estimated half–a-million British children out of poverty.
The proposed tax increase would cover the fiscal shortfall caused by the present UK Labour government’s scrapping of the so-called two-child limit and benefit cap, charged the IPPR report.
Raising [iGaming] taxes is “the first crucial step in the war we must wage against child poverty”, Brown told BBC Radio 4’s flagship news “Today Programme” and wrote in an article for today’s Guardian newspaper.
Reckless
The UK’s gambling industry representative Betting and Gaming Council immediately attacked the tax proposals as “economically reckless” and affirmed that such increases would only push bettors into the arms of the illicit market.
Brown, aged 74, was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland, the son of John Ebenezer Brown, a minister of the Church of Scotland, who strongly influenced his morality and politics.
He doubled down on his anti-gambling message and told interviewers that the UK gambling industry is both “significantly” under-taxed and tax-avoiding, with many operators based off-shore or in tax-free zones.
And he argued that gambling industry claims that they pay some £4.5 billion annually in tax (US$6.01bn) and employ 100,000 people are grossly exaggerated.
Brown, who lost the 2010 UK General Election to an eventual Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition headed by David Cameron, since elevated to Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, blamed growing UK child poverty on “14-years of Tory misrule”.
Austerity’s Children
Anti-poverty campaigners say that the two-child limit and benefit cap affects 1.6 million children and is the cause of rising rates of food insecurity and a sure start in life which helps lift people out of penury.
The “two-child limit” is a policy in the UK that restricts the payment of means-tested benefits, specifically the child element in Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit, to a maximum of two children per family.
It means that families with more than two children don’t receive financial support for subsequent children.
“These are austerity’s children, the victims of 14 years of Tory rule, an era whose most vindictive act was to treat newborn third and fourth children as second-class citizens, depriving them of all the income support available to their first and second siblings,” Brown wrote in today’s Guardian newspaper.
The IPPR report–titled “Reforming gambling taxation: How to lift half a million children out of poverty”–was published yesterday, August 6.
Harm
It suggests increasing taxes on online casinos from 21 percent to 50 percent and raising levies on slots and gaming machines from 20 percent to 50 percent.
Henry Parkes, principal economist and head of quantitative research at IPPR, said: “The gambling industry is highly profitable, yet is exempt from paying VAT and often pays no corporation tax, with many online firms based offshore.
“It is also inescapable that gambling causes serious harm, especially in its most high-stakes forms.
“Set against a context of stark and rising levels of child poverty, it only feels fair to ask this industry to contribute a little more.”
iGamingFuture will bring updates to this breaking news story throughout the day.
Watch this space.
