October
JunePunters will pay
High Court judges have decreed that racing bodies in NSW (and elsewhere) have a right to charge a fee for wagering operators to bet on their races.
Nowhere have I read that the learned judges have decreed that such a fee should be turnover-based. Nor that such a fee should be 1.5 percent of turnover.
Perhaps such a fee should be 15 percent, or 0.15 of one percent.
Perhaps a fee variation for the spring racing should be not upward but downward, given that it would be levied on a substantially greater base.
The setting of a fee, given the monopolistic situation of racing bodies, seems to be a matter for the ACCC rather than the High Court.
Keynesian theory was not an element pushed hard at the Rutherglen State School, but the preponderance of recognised economists pot turnover-based charges.
Any fee, levy, tax or impost — by whatever name — based on turnover is an inequitable and iniquitous charge, and is counter-productive to business.
More than all that, a turnover-based fee will not be paid for by those bogeymen — big, bad bookmakers or Betfair — no matter how hard that line is pushed by the big breeders and their lobbyists.
It will ultimately be paid for by the punters, and only collected by the bookmakers and Betfair.
I feel a real-estate resurgence coming on in Vanuatu.
When it comes to the punters, how ya gonna keep ’em down o the TAB farm now that they’ve seen the Paree of Betfair?
Rutherglen (Vic)