Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office general manager Alexander Balutan announced Tuesday the agency had moved the implementation of price adjustments of the Lotto, Sweepstakes, and Keno tickets from July 8 to July 23, 2018.
This is based on the capability of the system providers for a simultaneous implementation nationwide.
“In a letter from Pacific Online Systems Corporation [POSC] dated July 5, 2018, it states there that the start of downloading of the program fix to their terminals will be from July 9 to 21, 2018 and will take about two weeks for their program fix to be completely downloaded,” Balutan said.
PCSO has two existing lottery systems.
For Luzon, it’s with Philippine Gaming and Management Corp.
The firm’s contract, however, will end on Aug. 21, 2018; while for Visayas-Mindanao, it is held by POSC, and its contract will expire on July 31, 2018.
According to Arnel Casas, officer-in-charge assistant general manager for gaming sector, he recommended the postponement of the implementation of lotto ticket price increase upon the receipt of the letter from POSC.
“The objective really is to have a simultaneous/synchronized implementation nationwide of all online lottery system providers of changes to reflect DST [Documentary Stamp Tax] to lotto tickets. This is in compliance to the TRAIN law,” said Casas.
The TRAIN law is the first package of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program conceived by President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, which aims to correct a number of deficiencies in the tax system and simplify its scheme.
Since January 2018, all PCSO lotto prizes are taxed 20 percent if the amount of the prize or winnings is above P10,000.
As for the cost of tickets, Balutan earlier said the agency has no option but to abide by the law and increase its costs from P20 to P24 for Lotto; from P10 to P12 for Digit Games and Keno, P5 to P6 for traditional Sweepstakes tickets.