Bettors will be exempt from Income tax on premiums of up to 2,259.20 reais per month paid by bets. The value corresponds to the limit of the first range of the IRPF table. A IRS regulated the taxation of winnings from betting shops in a normative instruction published on Tuesday.
For a bettor’s winnings that exceed the exemption range, the bets They must collect 15% of the net prize at source, which is the difference between the final prize and the amount wagered. Bettors will not be able to deduct losses on other bets or sessions from the tax base.
The publication of the rules by the Tax Authorities comes two days before the Congress session to analyze presidential vetoes, scheduled for Thursday, among which there are the vetoes of Lula to sections of the sports betting bill that allowed the calculation of IR in the annual declaration, with deduction of losses.
The National Gaming and Lottery Association (ANJL), which brings together companies in the sector, stated that their requests were partially met. For the entity, the method of charging defined by the Revenue “does not follow international practices and has great potential to cause a migration of bettors to unauthorized sites, damaging the effectiveness of sector regulation and frustrating the Union’s expectation of revenue”.
Continues after advertising
“The best way to collect the tax is through the annual declaration, since this period of time would take into account the bettor’s entire trajectory and not just a single bet”, declared the ANJL in a note.
Radar found that the Revenue’s regulatory instruction generated doubts in the sector about the system for calculating the winnings of bettors who use several different websites. One of the questions raised is the possibility of a user circumventing taxation rules by placing several small bets, in such a way that the prizes paid for each bet never exceed the limit of the exemption band alone.
The Tax Authority’s instruction determines that “the betting operating agent will be responsible for calculating and collecting the IRRF relating to the operations carried out by him”. In theory, this could mean that, in order to avoid circumventing the exemption range, it would be necessary to have a system for calculating earnings by CPF to which all bets registered users had access. However, there is no clarity in the market on how to make it viable.
