With the 49 amendments presented so far, the Bill that regulates sports betting in Brazil is becoming a patchwork that will make debates difficult without causing the Congress agenda to stall, as the matter needs to be discussed and voted on by November 11th.
With the deadline for presenting amendments from all senators to the Sports Committee, starting this Thursday (5), the senators from each of the committees (Sport and Economic Affairs) can present new amendments in their respective commissions, which will be assessed by each of them individually.
Based on the preliminary results, in view of what has been presented so far, more drastic changes to the Bill submitted to the Senate will only be possible directly in the committees.
Among the most relevant amendments presented in this first phase, one limits the granting fee to R$30 million (US$ 5.8m) and increases it to up to two licenses per company. Another one includes expenses such as advertising, marketing, personnel and technological infrastructure in the amounts to be considered before applying the 18% tax on the operator, thus reducing the tax burden. The amendments are from senator Rogério Carvalho (PT-SE).
The same senator proposes changing the calculation basis table for the incidence of social allocations, reducing the amount to be paid by operators.
There are also issues such as the obligation for card companies and other payment methods to submit to a license from the Central Bank, which allows sports betting houses to acquire rights to sporting events.
Senator Soraya Thronicke (Pode-MS) proposed extending the grant period from three to five years, as stated in the Bill currently being processed in the House. Furthermore, she proposed the inclusion of the expression “at most”, before the grant value of R$30 million, so that the value cannot exceed the indicated total.
Another amendment by senator Thronicke determines that bookmakers will not be able to offer bonuses or other advantages in the form of promotions. She also wants defaulters, detected by the financial system, to be prevented from placing bets.
Senator Ciro Nogueira (PP-PI) presented an amendment reducing the income tax on bettors, stipulating 25% on anything exceeding R$500 (US$ 97) obtained from prizes resulting from sports betting. The senator considers the net prize to be the result equal to the difference between the value of the prize to be paid and the value of all bets previously placed in the 30-day period.
Even with all the difficulty that the betting sector has shown in demonstrations on GMB and also in official statements about the 18% tax burden on the GGR, the senator presented an amendment reducing the amount allocated to operators to 80%, an increase of 2 percentage points, stating that “it does not harm the financial viability of companies.” She wants to use the difference for use in education.
With the same reasoning, amendments from two senators impose an even greater tax burden on operators, allocating 3% to a Federal Police fund.
The same calculation was made by another senator, who intends to reduce the amount allocated to sports betting houses to 80%, redirecting 2% to the Ministry of Health to apply to the treatment and combat gambling addiction.
There was no shortage of proposals to remove from Bill 3626 the possibility of sports betting houses offering online casino games, as was included in the project approved by the Chamber of Deputies.
Some amendments presented give the prerogative of Caixa Econômica Federal, Loterias CAIXA and their licensees to operate sports betting in physical and virtual environments with exemption from the grant fee to be applied to betting houses.
Source: GMB
