Due to the war, almost everything changed for the legal gambling sector, just as for any other business in the country. However, there is one aspect that has remained constant: they continue to demonize and attack the legal gambling sector. You can often hear manipulative statements aimed against legal business, while "fighters for justice" try not to notice illegal gambling business. Against the background of real indicators of state budget revenues from legal gambling, such statements look strange, to put it mildly.
Instead of directing their potential to achieve victory over a common enemy, some politicians try to score political points by manipulating urgent social issues. For example, they do it by spreading false information about the real state budget revenues from legal gambling and criticizing the reform as a whole.
Certain politicians have intensified their attacks on legal state business recently: they spread fake news about "only UAH 35 million" of taxes paid last year. At the same time, they very persistently forget UAH 1.16 billion, which legal gambling establishments paid to the budget only in the form of license payments last year, according to the State Treasury.
Considering such statements, at least two conclusions suggest themselves. Either the people who write theses for these politicians do not monitor the market and do not look at official statistics, or this statement is simply a low-grade manipulation designed for an uninformed and inattentive audience. In any case, they contradict the facts.
Let's consider this on a specific example of one of the members of the Ukrainian Gambling Council, the PIN-UP Ukraine brand. Last year, the company paid UAH 271.2 million of taxes and license fees to the state budget (the license fee for the second year was paid in full – UAH 23.4 million). Tax deductions include income tax, single tax, personal income tax, war tax and the Unified Social Tax. That is, only one legal company paid UAH 247.8 million in taxes for 2022, which is 7 times more than UAH 35 million, which critics attribute to the entire legal sector.
It is necessary to understand that legal gambling remains a very politicized topic, even in spite of the fact that the country is at war. Due to the desire to get political profit, or frankly playing along with the illegal gambling businesses, some politicians zealously circulate fakes about legal gambling. They really don't like the fact that the sector was not only able to withstand the first year of the war, but shows a patriotic attitude, providing assistance for hundreds million hryvnias to the civilian population and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
That is why you should not fall to manipulations. Currently, the information space is filled with distorted information about the legal sphere of gambling, so it is necessary to thoroughly verify these theses, which are spread in traditional media and social media. You can do this through official open sources, for example, such as the website of the Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries.