Cambodia Carries Out a Fresh Self-Declaration Taxing Model for Casinos

According to The Khmer Times, the revenue-based taxing regime was adopted on December 30, 2022, two years after the country’s highly-anticipated casino bill was finally passed. 

New Taxation Regime for Gambling in Cambodia

The bill called the Law on the Management of Integrated Resorts and Commercial Gambling has set the tax on mass gaming at 7% while establishing a 4% tax on VIP gambling and contouring a series of other regulatory controls for the future. The Ministry of Economy and Finance has explained that the respective controls would be slowly introduced in the following five years. As part of the new tax regime, gambling venues will also need to comply with the International Financial Reporting Standards which are used to determine the way specific transactions and events need to be reported. 

According to Mey Vann, Secretary of State, who is also part of the General Secretariat of the Commercial Gambling Management Commission of Cambodia, the new set of rules is expected to provide better oversight of the overall gaming industry.

Check-and-Balance Practices

In Vann’s opinion, cases of operators and tax officials “hiding cash to be paid to the authority” would no longer be a problem once the new regulations will be fully implemented. This is because the fresh procedures will be used to decide which check-and-balance practices should be used to balance power among inspectors, regulators, casino operators, and other important stakeholders responsible for implementing the new regime. 

The check-and-balance practices translate to all parties being asked to verify or assess one another. At the same time, none of the parties are allowed to exploit anything belonging to the respective gambling business operations under review. In other words, casinos will not be able to cheat their gamblers and vice-versa. At the same time, gamblers will be allowed to file complaints provided they can gather enough evidence to support their claims.

From “Casino” to “Commercial Gambling”

Casino owners may also need to comply with another change brought by the new regime. Namely, they might be asked to replace the word “casino” with “commercial gambling” on all of their signages at the end of the five-year grace expiration date. This idea was born from the need to present Cambodia’s casinos as entertainment centers instead of standard gambling hubs.

In October 2022, the country presented a series of new guidelines for casino and gambling operators, primarily asking them to put their original licenses or certificates of legality on full display at visible places in their locations. The measure was necessary as a means of cracking down on the illegal gambling that has given the kingdom a bad reputation of late.