October 12, 2009 (CAP Newswire) — The somewhat remote Australian island state of Tasmania could possibly be joining the ranks of Malta and Gibraltar as havens for international online gambling company headquarters, according to recent reports that the local parliament there has all but eliminated taxes for online bookmaker companies.
This new legislation was apparently bundled into a larger law and attracted little attention until some Australian news sources did some investigating.
Now, "any corporate bookmaker who wants to set up in Tasmania will only have to pay an annual $256,000 license fee,” report the Australian Broadcasting Company’s Conor Duffy. That puts Tasmania in a class of the very lowest tax rates for the online gambling world, comparable to Malta and Gibraltar, which also enjoy a large number of iGaming business headquarters.
Although the Tasmanian government’s motivations aren’t hard to figure out — it wants simply to attract the online gaming dollar to its islands, as well as the jobs that go with it — the move has triggered an outcry in some parts of Australia.
But Tasmania doesn’t seem to mind. The treasurer for the state has even said that Tasmania could “potentially become a world-wide hub for corporate bookmakers.” And a little research show that Tasmania is historically friendly to gambling: It was the first Australian state top open a casino (in 1973) and the only state to allow “controversial betting exchange Betfair into the country back in 2006 when no other state would touch them,” again according to Mr. Duffy’s article.