Armenia seeks to increase taxes for online casinos

YEREVAN, February 5. /ARKA/. Hayk Sargsyan, an Armenian MP from the pro-governmental Civil Contract party, has introduced today a draft law proposing to change the taxation system for online games with winnings, online casinos, but not for sweepstakes and bookmakers.

During a discussion of the bill in the parliamentary committee on economic issues, Sargsyan cited research data, which say that the turnover in this field soared from 14 billion drams in 2010 to 6.3 trillion drams in 2023.

At the same time, he noted that the taxes and duties paid by these companies have increased from only by 1 billion drams to 33 billion drams.

According to the MP, these entities pay profit tax, while the real profit values cannot be verified, and the tax authorities have to take the information provided by the entities themselves at their word.

In this regard, Sargsyan proposed to introduce a 10% turnover tax in addition to the existing taxes and state duties. According to him, it will result in additional revenues of 100 billion drams for the state budget every year.

During the discussions, the committee members raised questions as to whether the adoption of the bill would not cause risks of closing entities or going into the “shadow”. Moreover, the committee did not have the government's conclusion in hand.

Nevertheless, the bill was approved by the committee, and will be included in the agenda of a session of the National Assembly.-0-