Focusing on the region, each city could have a bingo with up to 400 machines and the jogo do bicho, which is already running wild, would finally be “heated up” by paying a hefty amount in taxes. Of course, taxes are what motivate mayors.
With strong rejection by the churches, which see gambling addiction as a major problem, the project is advancing, but it is far from the sanction of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), whose ears are quite sensitive to the voice of evangelicals. Its Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, however, dreams of the extra resources.
The project that releases the game allows for the creation of two casinos in Santa Catarina (the population counts), 300 bingos (one per city in the case of Santa Catarina) and 10 jogo do bicho operators (one for every 700,000 inhabitants), based, again, on Santa Catarina.
The project creates a single tax, Cide-Jogos, with a rate of up to 17% on gross gaming revenue, and does not provide for the levy of other taxes, such as the ISS, which goes directly to city halls. Municipal Finance Secretaries argue that the activity cannot be exempted from the tax, collected by municipalities on the provision of services.
However, the project predicts that of the total collected by the Union, 16% would go to the Municipal Participation Fund (FPM) and 16% to the States. The whole cake should generate an amount of R$ 40 billion (US$ 7.8bln). Caixa’s lotteries, cited as a parameter for the estimates, had R$ 18.4 billion (US$ 3.57bln) in bets in 2021, of which 30% were paid in prizes, to give an idea.
Of the amount collected by Cide-Jogos, after deducting prizes paid by operators, R$ 1.4 billion (US$ 271m) would remain.
The report, by stipulating Cide-Jogos, vetoes the incidence of “any other contributions or taxes on revenues, income or profits arising” from gaming, but the mayors insist on the ISS.
The president of the Brazilian Association of Finance Departments in Capitals (Abrasf), Jeferson Passos, who is Aracaju's Finance Secretary, believes that the ISS, although not levied on bets and prizes, would be mandatory by law in situations such as the payment of commission responsible of jogo do bicho points of sale, a practice that usually occurs today informally with this game’s “pointers”. He said this in an interview with the newspaper O Globo.
In the House vote, the PT highlighted the need to raise the Cide rate to 30%, on the grounds that the 17% rate is out of step with other countries with legal gambling, but the text was maintained. The project's rapporteur argues that companies in the entertainment industry, the category in which games would fall, currently have a tax burden between 13% and 16% in Brazil.
Source: JMais
