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Just last week Gala Bingo announced that they are looking to close at least 5 of their least profitable land based bingo clubs in the UK, which would result in around 170+ job losses. It is also thought that a further 40 to 50 Gala Bingo clubs closures could be on the cards in the coming months as they look to tighten their bingo budget further.

A number of factors have been blamed for bingo clubs closures, but the recent rise in bingo tax has been like the final nail in the coffin so to speak for UK Bingo Operators. Mecca Bingo have been very vocal in their disgust of how bingo is being treated by the UK Government and the Bingo Association are also doing their bit to try and see this very unjust law backtracked.

Speaking to Sun City, Chief Executive of Mecca Bingo Ian Burke said, "The support we have received from MPs from all parties shows the strength of feeling there is about what the Government is doing to bingo. It's good to see that our new Speaker believes in fair play too."

At the end of the day you have got to fight for what you believe in and it is basically totally incomprehensible how the Government think they can even start to make sense of raising bingo duty tax to 22%, when the game of online bingo remains at 15%. Two games exactly the same are being charged different taxes.

Bingo is bingo whether it is played in a land based bingo club or online. We have already seen Mecca Bingo win a VAT tribunal case where they were charge different rates of VAT on their party bingo interval games and in a way the bingo tax argument currently going on is not that dissimilar to this case......although of course lots of the legalities surrounding it would be different as this is tax we are talking about and not VAT.