New £85m gaming tax hits pubs

Government plans to change the taxation of popular quiz and games machines like Cluedo, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Monopoly will cost the pub trade £85m — or £2,500 per pub.

The warning from the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) comes as Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs seeks to reclassify skills with prizes (SWP) machines as gambling machines, making them liable for gaming machine tax.

HMRC also wants to make the tax retrospective for three years. The BBPA estimates this will cost the industry £85m, or £2,500 per pub. The group also fears it will mean fewer people playing SWP machines for entertainment and more people playing fruit machines to gamble, as well as hitting jobs.

SWP machines have be-come increasingly popular in pubs in recent years. There are currently estimated to be around 35,000 SWP mach-ines being used in the UK.

The industry estimates the tax revenues that will be lost to the Treasury due to falling revenues, failing businesses and rising job losses will far outweigh any revenue gain from the tax change.

Brigid Simmonds, BBPA chief executive, said: "The perverse result of this tax change will be to switch more people onto gambling as quiz machines are switched off across Britain. That cannot be a sensible or sustainable public policy outcome for Government.

"It must make more sense for Government to encourage those people who enjoy playing machines to have a bit of fun with their friends with games that are about skill and entertainment, rather than turn to gambling.

"At the moment there is an incentive for pubs and people to play these machines. This proposed tax change will remove that at a stroke.

"This sudden tax change will place a swingeing tax burden on the industry. The inevitable result of such a considerable cost increase will be business failure, job losses and contraction in this growing market."