Tax Receipts From Betting

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27369, 7 June 1954, Page 8

Tax Receipts From Betting

Increased taxation receipts from betting was one of the advantages claimed for a legalised system of off-course betting; and revenue from this source has in fact increased substantially through the operations of the Totalisator Agency Board. Yet the public do not find it easy to see how much revenue accrues to the State from betting. In the abbreviated summary of the public accounts printed yearly in the newspapers—which is usually the basis for comment by the Minister of Finance—the amount is not shown, though smaller sums are mentioned. Nor 4s the sum ascertainable from the long and detailed abstract from the public accounts that appears as a supplement to the New Zealand Gazette. However, in the full public accounts that are presented to Parliament later in the year, the revenue from taxes on betting, described as “ duties payable by “casing clubs”, appear as one item in the section headed, “ Stamp and "death duties”. In the 1952-53 financial year “duties payable by “ racing clubs ” amounted to £3,301,824: The sum collected in 1953-54 cannot be discovered from a fairly detailed break-down of the public accounts issued last week. However, a fair idea can be obtained from the Abstract of Statistics. The Census and Statistics Department regards figures connected with totalisator turnover as important because they are printed monthly as one of five “ miscellaneous “ indicators of economic activity ”. The Abstract also prints monthly the gross “ government taxation ” from totalisator turnover;, and though the figures for the last financial year are not complete in the latest Abstract, there is enough information there and elsewhere to suggest that the net tax for the 1953-54 financial year may exceed £3,650,000. This is a substantial sum, and one that is for

various reasons of interest to the public. It may be merely custom that sanctions revenue from betting being hidden under the “ stamp and “death duties” heading; if this is so, the sum collected and the origin and nature of the tax justify the small adjustment necessary to show revenue from betting openly and as an individual item in the public accounts.