The tax on organizations operating in the gambling business in Armenia should be considerably increased. This was stated by Hayk Sargsyan, an MP from the ruling Civil Contract party, during the debates on the package of bills on making amendments and additions to the Tax Code at the meeting of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs of the National Assembly on Wednesday.

In particular, Sargsyan proposed changing the taxation system for online games with winnings and online casinos. However, totalizers and bookmakers are not on this list.

To substantiate his position, the lawmaker cited the results of his own research, according to which the turnover in this sector increased from 14 billion drams to 6.3 trillion drams in Armenia.

In 2023, “At the same time, revenues from taxes and duties have reached from 1 billion drams to 33 billion,” the MP noted.

According to Sargsyan, this is due to the fact that these gambling organizations pay profit tax. Also, it is simply impossible to specify the real profit figures. And because of this, Armenia’s tax authorities are forced to take at face value the data provided to them by these organizations.

In this regard, Sargsyan proposed adding a 10 percent turnover tax to existing taxes and state duties.

“This will lead to an additional 100 billion drams being added to the [Armenian] state budget every year,” the lawmaker said.

After quite long and heated debates, the law initiative was approved by the aforementioned standing committee.

And at the end of the debates, Hayk Sargsyan, with the support of fellow MP Sergey Bagratyan, agreed to increase the turnover tax on gambling business in Armenia to 20 percent.