Tax Man Appeals Bingo Rebate

Rank Group Plc has confirmed that Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) had made the decision to formally launch an appeal against a directive that would grant the bingo company a tax rebate in the region of £36million, leaving the door open for many other bingo businesses to follow suit.

The Rank Group - which includes national favourite Mecca Bingo, and which has also successfully integrated it business into the online bingo industry, revealed in May that they had persuaded the VAT and Duties Tribunal that HMRC's insistence that VAT was applied to interval games was in breach European regulations.

Rank claimed that since tax was imposed some but not all interval Bingo games it should be considered a violation of 'European principles' which state that services of a comparable nature should be managed in the same way by the tax authorities.

It was widely expected that Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs would appeal the decision before the imposed deadline of July 10th.

In an announcement made on Friday 11th July, Rank confirmed that the appeal had been launched and declared its expectation that the petition would be deliberated by the High Court throughout the course of 2009.

In spite of the fact that bingo is judged to be the softest form of gambling the tax applied to interval games makes bingo the only conventional gambling services that received twofold taxation, first by VAT and secondly via gross profits tax. 

17th July 2008