The Casino Association of South Africa has issued a warning over illegal online gaming and state that it is now a threat to national tax revenue since there has been a rapid increase in https://www.legitgambling.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpillegal gambling.
However, online gaming is yet to be legalized in South Africa but at present, South African punters are accessing online gaming services illegally.
The CASA has now called on national regulators to consider implementing some sort of legalized service that will allows punters to gamble online safely as well as generating additional tax revenue for the country.
The Chief executive officer of CASA, Themba Ngobese said that it can be hard to calculate tax revenue lost from such activities but as long as such services are still available, this could see the country loosing hundreds of millions of South African Rands.
We have seen a mushrooming of online gaming operations which are disguised as internet cafés and/or entertainment lounges
We always make an estimate and say, look, our gaming tax, which excludes VAT and corporate tax as of the end of the year at March 2014, was just about R2.2 billion (€161.5 million/$189.9 million).
If they do 5% of what we do, then the country and coffers are losing R110 million in terms of gaming tax, which is a big figure.
We believe that it (regulation) is the future; unfortunately it is illegal as outlawed by statute, but it’s happening nonetheless and unfortunately also competing with us, which is not fair under the circumstances in which we operate