Gaming taxes record 56.5% decline

The city’s gaming taxes between January and May plunged by 56.5% to 21.04 billion patacas, the Financial Services Bureau announced yesterday.
Last month, the city only collected around 500 million patacas in taxes.
Since the beginning of the year to May 31, the Macau casino gross gaming revenue stood at 33 billion patacas, a contraction of 73.7% year-on-year.
The government had previously revised its estimates for 2020 gaming taxes from 98.3 billion patacas to nearly 50 billion patacas.
The data from the bureau also showed that gaming revenues it collected since January accounted for 83.4% of the 25.22 billion patacas that the government had collected from all sources.
Meanwhile, the government had still recorded a surplus of 8.23 billion up to May 31, a downturn of 74.3% compared to last year.
The gross gaming revenue of Macau casinos are taxed at a total rate of 39%, including other levies.
Macau gaming revenue plunged again in May, recording a drop of 93.2% from a year earlier, a figure that was slightly better than the median analyst estimate of a 95% drop.
Official data shows that gross gaming revenue plunged to 1.76 billion patacas last month, representing the eighth month straight of declining revenue.
The figure shows that the SAR is still suffering from the impact of Covid-19, along with the continuous entry and travel restrictions.
Meanwhile, analysts previously noted that casinos are losing more than $1 million a day.
The outbreak has been largely contained in Macau as well as in neighboring Hong Kong and mainland China, but restrictions on travel make it almost impossible for tourists and high rollers to show up to place their bets. LV