GPT Unfair Tax Burden
There's a fundamental flaw in the U.K government's new gross profits tax (GPT) on bookmakers, tax advisers at Ernst & Young contend. The new tax scheme contains no provision for carrying forward or carrying back month-to-month losses experienced by bookmakers, which is exacerbated by the firms'
inability to submit group returns. Ernst & Young is one of several companies keeping close watch on figures posted by U.K. bookmaking firms.
Caroline Artis, an Ernst & Young partner, points out that bookies report substantial losses in individual months, as occurred following Euro 2000. "Under the legislation as it currently stands, bookmakers would have to win back their losses in the same calendar month to get full relief from GPT," she explained. "Whoever drafted these rules has not taken into account the volatile nature of the online betting industry in particular, where monthly losses are more common. If no carry forward is to be allowed, groups at
least need to be able to offset their Internet losses against their high street betting shop profits. To achieve this, business would have to put both sets of operations in the same company. This may not always be
practical. Moreover, it is a poor tax system that necessitates restructuring, which may be against the commercial interests of a business, simply in order to achieve a fair tax treatment."
Last August the company released its "Winners and Losers - The Future of Online Betting Report" outlining some of the dramatic changes expected for the industry.
Spread Betting Gains from Election
British spread betting firms are finding the upcoming parliamentary general election a boom time. Some bookies are expecting bets of up to £1,000 per seat from individual punters. "There could be up to five times as many political spread bets made as there were in the 1997 campaign," Spreadex CEO Jonathan Hufford told the Evening Standard. An estimated 10,000 spread bets were placed during the 1997 election, with many punters winning or losing dramatically thanks to an unexpectedly large Labour majority.
This year a majority of bets will center upon Conservative seats with spreads dropping to194-200, a change from a few short weeks ago when the spread was 214-222.
Porn a Popular Online Destination
Europeans aren't shy about checking out online porn sites, according to figures from NetValue. A recently published study on the subject shows:
- Spanish Internet users visit adult sites the most, followed by residents of Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark. Trailing at the bottom were French Internet users.
- German Internet users spend the longest time online at these sites, an average of 70.4 minutes, followed closely behind by Spanish users, who spend an average of 66.7 minutes at them.
- Young men are the typical visitor profile at the adult sites.
- However, each country has its own specificity:
- France: Seniors visit the sites for the most amount of time each month.
- U.K.: Women are more connected than in other countries.
- Germany: Both the young and old connect for a total duration of over one hour per person.
- Spain: More young people are connected to adult sites than in other countries,
- In each country, users aged 50 years and older are the ones that spend the most time connected to adult websites, and
- Porncity.net is the most successful of European adult websites.
Group Says Online Abuses Costly for UK Businesses
The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) recently reported that corporate e-mail and Internet access abuses cost British businesses £500 million last year. Whether the messages are personal or business-related is unknown, but 20 million workers send out 4.5 million emails daily. Faced with such astronomical figures, FAST suggests that it's time for businesses to develop and implement Internet and e-mail policies.
"No company is immune from e-risk," FAST Corporate Service head Richard Willmot told Outlaw. "You cannot be present in every office every hour of the day and you cannot rely on employees to exercise sound judgment 100 percent of the time."
He added, "U.K. businesses must establish clear policies and procedures to help reduce electronic exposures and lessen the likelihood of costly litigation."
Research has shown that employees like to visit news, investment, pornography, travel, entertainment and shopping sites while on company time and computers. Further, about half of all employees surveyed admit to receiving e-mail that would be considered racist, sexist, pornographic or inappropriate. Nearly all employees (90 percent) admit to surfing the Internet while at work, which accounted for nearly a third of their online activities.