Gambling regulators in Australia are looking for ways to tighten control over illegal online gambling. This is because Illegal Betting in Australia is growing faster than Legal Gambling leading to high tax revenue losses. Furthermore, gambling news websites predict that by next year, over $2 billion will be made in illegal bets.
According bookie news analysts, $383 million in lost taxes took place because of illegal gambling. Thus, Australian tax authorities are looking to crack down on Australia’s $50billion illegal gambling market.
In addition, authorities believe that there is a strong connection between illegal betting and money laundering. The Federal Treasury and the Black Economy Taskforce are examining this report in order to create a strategy against it.
Analyzing Illegal Gambling around the World
This latest report comes from the anti-illegal betting task force in Hong Kong. Furthermore, this taskforce is investigating the extent of illegal betting in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and South Korea.
Illicit betting expenses estimates are directly seen with losses in tax revenue. In addition, there is an indirect correlation with money laundering and the financing of criminal organizations and match fixing. The report presumes that unlawful games wagering is “at any rate as large as the legitimate market”.
These numbers also say that illegal betting is an industry that earns between $29 billion to $124 billion. On the other hand, legal betting revenues are around $29 billion to $88 billion.
The estimation is that around eight out of 10 worldwide sports bet are illegal. According to pay per head sportsbook websites, this is mostly due to online gambling. Thus, around 80% of all sports bets are illegal.
This comes to no surprise to many pay per head bookie websites because illegal payout rate are higher than legal ones. In order to combat illegal gambling, Australia wants to create several laws to help them deter illegal operations. These include, blocking offshore gambling websites, encouraging banks to prevent transactions from illegal betting sites and more.
