Georgia Updates “Electronic Registry of Citizens”

Georgia’s Ministry of Finance has overhauled the “electronic registry of citizens” to abide by the impending amendments to the gambling laws of the Caucasus nation.

Updated laws:

Implemented by the executive order of Irakli Gharibashvili, the Prime Minister, as of July 1 of this year, the fresh laws of the “Code of Administrative Offences” will officially take effect in the said state. In addition, these fresh laws involve stern tightening of compliance regulations in every gambling section.

Furthermore, Georgia will apply fresh gambling laws that forbid any resident younger then twenty-five from engaging in online and land-based gambling activities. Also, the Code will additionally forbid those who have been registered with criminal offenses by Georgian courts, as well as any public and government sector worker, from gambling.

However, this move was supervised by the Revenue Office of the Ministry of Finance, which officially overhauled the “electronic registry” by the government as a central database for tracking the gambling activities of Georgian citizens.

During this ongoing week, the Ministry of Finance verified that information about 1,503,989 locals were mechanically entered into the register of individuals forbidden from engaging in gambling, as reported by SBCEurasia. The mentioned number involves all local government employees, those who have voluntarily requested to be excluded from gambling, individuals with a criminal record and those younger than 25.

Stricter supervision of gambling operations:

The government of Georgia has implemented stricter oversight of gambling operations, which will be compelled to hand over separate client databases to government agencies to cross-reference locals who have taken part in any of the gambling activities. It doesn’t matter whether it is the gambling, leisure or retail-specific, those businesses that don’t obey the cross-reference of the age of clients will be imposed a fine of a maximum of GEL 30,000, which is approximately €10,000.

Together with the launch of stricter compliance rules, the government is increasing the revenue taxes on revenues collected from gambling from 10% to 15%, a rule verified in Georgia’s national financial plan for this year.

Relatedly, Prime Minister Gharibashvili also ordered the agencies to consider the option of raising the tax on clients gains from 2% to 5%. This is a tax rule that may be applied by the end of 2024, according to a recent report by SBCNews.

Georgian Prime Minister raises tax rate for gambling businesses in Georgia to 15%:

In other news, during his November 2023 budget speech, the aforementioned Prime Minister increased the tax rate on gambling businesses in the country, as gambling turnover increased last year.