Barbados to impose a 15% tax on lottery winnings

The Freundel Stuart administration in Barbados has announced that it will implement a 15 percent tax on lottery winnings over a certain amount, even as it acknowledged that “some changes” had been made to the measure announced in the national budget.

A statement from the island-nation’s Ministry of Finance indicated that the new measure would come into effect now that the appropriate legislation has been approved.

It said that when the measure was first announced, “some industry players wrote to ask the Ministry to re-examine the proposal, highlighting some challenges which they believed might have been encountered given the changed structure of their industry.

“The Ministry examined those concerns, found some to be valid, and formally indicated to at least one major player that it had decided not to pursue the measure in its original form.

The statement added that the Ministry of Finance is now putting the “finishing touches to the proposal, following which industry players will be duly informed. It is expected that this process will be completed in a few weeks.”

Under the new proposal, people who win more than BDS$100,000 (US$ 50,000) or more in lotteries would be required to pay a 15 percent tax.

Meanwhile, the administration said that legislation regarding the Consolidation Tax, The Tax on Bank Assets, and the Municipal Solid Waste Tax, have either been completed or are in the final stages of completion and will be laid and debated in parliament over the next 3 weeks.

When passed, together with the passage of the Lottery Winnings Tax, they would represent the full legal implementation of the tax component of administration’s fiscal measures from 2013. -(CMC)