All scheduled racing in Britain on 10 September will be cancelled and the sport will, in effect, go on strike, as racing escalates its protests against a Treasury proposal to align the rate of duty charged on sports betting with the rate for much more addictive games of pure chance such as roulette and online slot machines.<\/p>\n
The move to abandon meetings at Uttoxeter, Lingfield, Kempton and Carlisle is expected to result in the loss of about \u00a3700,000 to the industry.<\/p>\n
The action, first reported by the Times<\/a>, has been agreed following cooperation between Jockey Club Racecourses, which operates Kempton and Carlisle; Arena Racing Company, the operator of Uttoxeter and Lingfield; and the British Horseracing Authority, the sport\u2019s ruling body.<\/p>\n Gambling on games of chance is taxed at 21% of an operator\u2019s gross profits, while the duty on betting \u2013 on racing, sports and other events without a fixed profit margin for the operator \u2013 is set at 15%. There is an additional charge of 10% of gross profits for bets on UK racing for the statutory Levy, which has returned money to racing since off-course betting was legalised in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n Quick GuideGreg Wood’s Sunday tipsShow<\/p>\n Southwell 1.22 Golden Prosperity 1.52 Akabusi 2.22 Wild Clary 2.52 Rock Iguana 3.22 Ultrasoul 3.52 Vincent Rocks 4.22 Native Instinct (nap) 4.52 Divot<\/p>\n Pontefract 2.12 Raulin 2.42 Delinquent 3.12 Precious Spartan 3.42 Stormy Impact 4.12 Equity Law (nb) 4.42 Al Sayah 5.12 Carlton And Co<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n The proposal to equalise the duty rate for betting and gaming products was initially floated by the Treasury in the final months of Rishi Sunak\u2019s Conservative government, but it survived the transition to a Labour administration and was the subject of a consultation process which closed in July.<\/p>\n Betting and gaming have been treated separately for taxation purposes since the Betting and Gaming Act came into force in 1961. There is a widespread belief in racing that a levelling of the duty rates will make the sport more expensive for gambling operators and as a result, far less attractive when compared with gaming products with a guaranteed return.<\/p>\n Alternatives for the tax regime around gambling include a proposal from the Social Market Foundation thinktank that gaming duty could be increased to 50% and sports betting to 25%, with changes to the Levy system ensuring that racing would not lose out.<\/p>\n The former prime minister Gordon Brown has also advocated for a significant rise in the duty charged on fixed-margin gaming products.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Launching the British Horseracing Authority\u2019s campaign against the tax proposals last month, Brant Dunshea, the BHA\u2019s acting chief executive, said the sport\u2019s stakeholders were \u201cunited in their opposition to the Treasury\u2019s proposals to harmonise remote gambling duties\u201d. Dunshea added: \u201cIf the chancellor delivers this tax bombshell at the autumn budget, not only will jobs be lost but the future of Britain\u2019s second-largest spectator sport will be in jeopardy.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is why it is vital that the government carefully considers the argument made by all British racing\u2019s stakeholders and works alongside us to protect a cherished national institution.\u201d The races lost on 10 September are expected to be added to other cards scheduled around the same time.<\/p>\n The date chosen for the racing \u201cstrike\u201d is 24 hours before the start of the high-profile St Leger meeting at Doncaster, which the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and his wife, Victoria, a keen racing fan, attended last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All scheduled racing in Britain on 10 September will be cancelled and the sport will, in effect, go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-72680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}