Olympic Lottery Taxed?

I work in London and consider myself to be a part-time Londoner. I was pleased when the Olympic comittee awarded the 2012 Olympic Games to London. I did wonder how London would finance such a major sporting event but my question was soon answered: The UK National Lottery

Camelot who run the UK national lottery have started a special Olympics fund raising scratch cards. The first of which has already gone on sale is called ‘Go For Gold’ and offers a top prize of £2012.

This seems like a great idea. I assumed that most if not all of the profit from the sale of these scratch cards would go towards financing the London Olympic Games. This is normally about 28% of the £1 ticket price.

So imagine how shocked I was to learn that the Labour Government has decided that 12% of the profit from the sales of Olympic Lottery tickets will be creamed off by the treasury for an ‘Olympic Lottery Tax’! This is expected to be about £340 million.

This is just plain old wrong! This money should go directly towards the Olympic Games. Why should the goverment profit from this?

Read the articles from The Conservative Party HERE

Read the BBC news article Olympic Lottery Puzzle

Matt

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