Merged Tabcorp-Tatts gaming giant wants Australia-wide digital bet tax

The $11 billion Australian gaming giant created by the merger of Tabcorp and Tatts will make a priority of fighting for nationally consistent digital-betting taxes on its foreign bookmaker rivals.

After shareholders this week voted to approve the long-awaited Tabcorp-Tatts mega-merger, Tabcorp chair Paula Dwyer said a political focus would be working to ensure regulations kept pace with the fast-changing wagering environment.

Ms Dwyer said the 15 per cent “point-of-consumption taxes” being rolled out in some states – taxing revenue on digital betting losses for the first time – must be “harmonised” across the board.

“We believe it should be harmonised,” she said. “We don’t want to create opportunities to have efficiences between the states exploited.“

Ms Dwyer’s comments come as Tabcorp’s rival online corporate bookmakers urge governments in Victoria and New South Wales not to follow the 15 per cent tax rates of other jurisdictions, saying it would be too onerous and could jeopardise their businesses.

Tabcorp has long argued that point-of-consumption are needed to “level the playing field” in the gambling industry, as retail betting companies Tabcorp and Tatts have to pay vastly higher taxes than the online bookmakers, licensed in the Northern Territory.

Ahead of the Tabcorp-Tatts merger implementation on December 22, Ms Dwyer praised the “huge team effort” throughout the long-delayed 14-month saga of securing regulatory approval of the deal.

“Now the challenge is to complete the integration and deliver at least $130 million in synergies we have committed to,” she said.

Ms Dwyer said integration would take up to two years, and the large savings would be achieved by 2020.

“We have now to really focus on implementing our plans … to really drive the best plan to take the integrated business forward,” she said.

Challenges in the Federal Court recently forced the merger proposal to be sent back to the competition tribunal for review, but it was again given the green light earlier this month.

Ms Dwyer said she was “always confident we would get there in one shape or another“.

“Collectively we believe these businesses belong together … and it was worth giving a red-hot go,” she said. “I never lost my resolve.”

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