Legislation
Argentina – Argentine floors under increased tax scrutiny
By Phil - 3 July 2013
The Argentine tax office Administración de Ingresos Públicos (AFIP) has announced steps to more closely regulate the gaming industry.
According to resolution 3510, the tax office will have more scope when it comes to fiscal control over gaming. The resolution allows the tax office to create a registry of gaming operations and gives it wider powers when it comes to investigating revenue made by gaming operations nationwide.
Introducing the new resolution Head of AFIP Ricardo Echegaray explained that as control over other sectors of the economy had been tightened it was necessary to establish a regime that would provide AFIP with information regarding the operations carried out by the industry. This will be achieved via new fiscal systems which had been specifically designed to monitor the gaming sector more closely.
The new rules will be introduced slowly in order to give operators time to comply. However, the new regime imposes number of measures which could prove extremely inconvenient and time consuming for local operators and affects bingo halls, casinos and online betting and telephone betting. However the horse racing industry, raffles and lotteries are exempt from the new act. According to the new resolution gaming operators must send daily information to the tax office regarding gaming income per gaming product.
For slot machines operators must report the “coin in” as well as the “coin out” values and record the amount payable in tax per machines per day. Casinos operators must from now on record and report gross gaming income for each table. Bingo operators must also report the value of all tickets sold along with the amount of prizes paid out. For online gaming operators must record the total amount of bets made along with prizes paid out and each must be recorded according to game type. The same rules are now in place for fixed line telephone betting and mobile phone betting.
The new regime is part of a much wider campaign led by the tax office to curb tax evasion and raise much need income in order to bolster Argentina’s ailing economy. In addition the gaming industry is becoming increasingly the focus of government attention. In the face of rising inflation which currently stands at 23% the government has initiated a number of measures designed to dissuade Argentines from using dollars and stop the flight of savings from the country. As previously reported in March the Argentine government announced plans to block credit card transactions with foreign casinos and online gaming sites. The measure, which went into effect on March 15 was amongst a number of recent moves designed to restrict the flow of dollars out of the central bank and bolster the value of the Argentine peso.
