Champion jockey Oisin Murphy has warned the sport of horse racing is in major trouble with the threat of tax harmonisation on the horizon.
Earlier this week, all scheduled horse racing in Britain was cancelled in a strike against the proposed changes with meetings abandoned at Uttoxeter, Lingfield, Kempton and Carlisle.
The move is believed to have cost the industry as much as £700,000 as jockeys, trainers and owners headed to Westminster to lobby MPs as part of the ‘Axe the Racing Tax’ campaign.
Murphy was among the top jockeys posing in the campaign silks in the shadow of Big Ben for a photo opportunity to begin the day’s proceedings.
The Irishman argued betting on horse racing was not the same as using a slot machine or playing in a casino.
“You look at the horses racing and you try and work out a winner. You obviously need luck but there is a method to it.”
The British Horseracing Authority believes tax harmonisation would lead to significant job losses and decline in an industry that directly or indirectly supports 85,000 jobs – and cost the sport as much as £160 million.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is widely expected to make the drastic change in her autumn budget on November 26, which will see online gambling tax combined into a single rate.
As of today, UK betting sites pay tax in two categories – a general duty that concerns sports like horse racing taxed at 15% of gross profits and a remote gaming duty that covers casino games and slot machines levied at 21%.
Harmonisation would mean racing becomes the most expensive product a bookmaker can carry, forcing operators to make prices less competitive in order to maintain profit margins.
That could lead to increased traffic toward offshore sportsbooks in the near future who are based in countries like Malta and aren’t liable to gambling taxes in the UK.
Joe Lyons is a betting industry writer for GamblingIndustryNews with years of experience on reputable gambling websites. Joe specialises in long form content in the world of sports betting and gambling. Joe is recognised as an expert in sports fields such as horse racing, soccer, NFL and NBA.
