The Gambling Business Group sets out the scene of carnage that tax proposals offered up by the Social Market Foundation would create if implemented. And it’s a proposition where everyone loses.
The industry has had a few days to reflect on the Social Market Foundation’s proposals to raise taxes on gaming machines to 40 percent. And that time has produced extremely robust, coherent and persuasive arguments to discard the SMF’s tax hike framework.
The collective industry view is a tax rise will, not could, but will result in the closure of many small family businesses in town centres and seaside resorts; job losses for local staff; an acceleration in the UK’s high street decline; substantially reduced tax revenues, business rates and Levy contributions; and – the most ridiculous of all – drive more players into unregulated, unprotected illegal black markets operating out of eastern Europe and across the world.
It’s fanciful, ideological nonsense and totally irresponsible posturing by the SMF.
That said, it is riding the wave of a vibe and emotion in spite of all governance rules to legislate on facts and evidence.
That’s what makes this an existential concern.
The idea that bingo will be lost from the high street and even the leisure sector entirely is unthinkable. The same for small family businesses that have built their operations over 4 and 5 generations; working men’s clubs – the traditional heart and soul leisure spot for working people for over 100 years will disappear; AGCs, one of the most popular forms of affordable entertainment on the high street, lost because of ideological whims and unsubstantiated data; investment on the high street will decline because investors simply could not trust the government due to its anti-business, anti-growth policies.
And let no-one be fooled: a 40 percent increase in MGD will not raise Treasury revenues to the level that UK plc requires – in fact, analysts Regulus Partners have presented a powerful and incontrovertible case that undermines the credibility and reliability of the SMF research and concludes that it will actually reduce tax income rather than raise it.
I would like to congratulate Regulus on the speed in which they were able to produce a coherent response full of relevant facts. It’s a shame that the SMF don’t have even a modicum of Regulus’s acumen.
But setting aside the facts that only 48 per cent of the public gamble, and more than half of those that do gamble crazily on the uncontrolled National Lottery, the idea that the SMF attack is directed at land based gambling businesses is curious at best.
These operations are heavily regulated by both the Gambling Commission and the local authorities; pay a percentage of revenues to the Gambling Levy; provides taxes to both national and local authorities; employ local people; invest on the high street; and are crucial to the economy of towns and seaside resorts across the UK.
And these numbers are falling as the Gambling Commission statistics confirm.
To increase taxes at a time when the Gambling Act Review is restricting opportunities and growth is incoherent. But to continue to raise the costs whilst consistently refusing the industry the opportunity to raise its own stakes and limits – it’s now 13 years without a shift – is punitive policy-making and an anti-business practice.
The Social Market Foundation’s report is a policy of decline and a disincentive for investment. And enacting the SMF proposals would be the worst example of economic self harm – and the high street will be the injured party.
Originally published on Coinslot on July 6, 2026. Republished with permission.