Excessive company name display fees lead to loss of jobs in gambling industry – Asking for abolition of tax on winnings above RSD 11,000

The director of the Association of Gambling Providers (AGP), Rade Karan, hopes that the Constitutional Court will soon consider the request by AGP to examine the constitutionality of the provisions of the Law on Financing Local Self-Government enabling the maximum increase of company name display fees. He says that the enormous increase in these fees in the past few years is not economically justified.

According to Karan, the provision in question has enabled local self-governments to raise annual company name display fees to up to 10 times that of the average gross salary, which has been used by all local self-governments to increase the tax by the maximum amount.

– The average company display fee per shop in Serbia in 2011 and 2012 amounted to around RSD 100,000, whereas the amount jumped to around RSD 300,000 in 2013 and to RSD 370,000 in 2014 and 2015. Last year, it was around RSD 500,000 on average – Karan said.

As he estimated, there is no economic justification for increasing these fees four times, and they have “eaten” around a thousand various jobs in AGP member-companies in the past three years.

Karan reminded that the association had complained about the provisions of the Law on Income Tax envisioning taxation of winnings higher than RSD 11,000 and added that the players themselves have filed a people's initiative with around 200,000 signatures to the National Assembly of Serbia asking for the abolition of those provisions, which they deemed discriminatory.

He said that AGP member-companies were paying all their obligations towards the state, their employees and supplier regularly and that they had paid around EUR 20 million in various taxes, fees and compensations to the budgets of the state and local self-governments in 2016.

– In the past five years alone, more than EUR 70 million has been paid to the state in fiscal and para-fiscal charges. Our companies do not owe a single dinar in taxes – Karan said.

UPIS - Udruženje priređivača igara na sreću

Ustavni sud Republike Srbije

Narodna skupština Republike Srbije

Association of Gambling Providers

AGP

Rade Karan

Law on Financing Local Self Government

company name display fee

Law on Income Tax

peoples initiative