BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s lower house approved on Wednesday a bill that aims to regulate sports betting in a move that could boost its 2024 budget by over 1.65 billion reais ($335.65 million).
The bill will now be sent to the Senate.
The approval was welcomed by the government, whose leader in the lower house Jose Guimaraes said the bill “will be an important step towards ending or reducing tax evasion” in the country.
“It will also contribute to increasing the State’s revenue and consequently more resources to finance the national reconstruction project,” he said in a post on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The approved bill applies to bets on sporting events and online casinos and includes an 18% tax on the net revenue of online betting companies.
Tax revenue will be distributed to the tourism, sports and education ministries, the National Public Security Fund, social security, and to sports organizations and confederations.
The bill also establishes that the grant for these companies to operate in the country will be worth up to 30 million reais, valid for three years.
($1 = 4.9158 reais)
(Reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello and Bernardo Caram; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Stephen Coates)
