The Guardian Points Two Expanded Uk Gambling Commission That Is Less Effective

An op-ed article that is critical both of Britain’s developing gambling reforms as well as  impending controls on the part of the Gambling Commission to go into effect starting on September first, has been published in the UK newspaper The Guardian.

In the face of two events,  Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ending of the proposal for  supercasinos and the fact that international online poker and casino groups have foregone the opportunity to locate in Britain so as to be regulated, the article points out that in spite of this the Commission now has 200 employees which represents twice the staff of the former Gaming Board.

The editorial also points out that the present Gambling Act has failed to bring about even the government's weakened proposals in light of the fact that the above efforts have been unsuccessful.

The original intention was to create Britain as a friendly locale for online gambling operations. It was supposed that Britain would take a pragmatic approach and treat the online gambling operations as legitimate businesses assuming that they agreed to function responsibly.

According to the editorial however, this has not been the outcome. What has resulted is that only 14 minor online poker and casino operators have decided to register for UK licenses, none of which are mainstream. It seems that the United Kingdom 15 percent gross tax rate is the main problem. Nobody wants to pay it.

Since, according to The Guardian, the nature of the online gambling world is essentially that it is without borders, the result is that a computer server can be placed virtually in any country.
As long as a company is located within the European Economic Area, it is allowed to advertise in Britain and therefore Malta has become the most popular location. In Malta the tax rate is a mere 2.5%. There are as money as 200 online gambling companies that have already applied there for licenses. This has effectively bypassed the UK Gambling Commission.

Even though, it is thought, the country might want to reduce the tax rate to match that of  Malta, it isn’t going to happen. Therefore the article includes that there is a real problem.

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