A new gambling tax in Spain will require winners to pay 20% in taxes for prizes of more than 2,500 euros starting this year, which is negatively impacting ticket sales for Loterías and other organizations such as Once, whose raffles used to be tax exempt.
Loterías sold 102.3 million euros worth of tickets in May, and at this point it looks like it will struggle to meet this year's sales goal of 824 million euros.
True, the year-end Gordo de Navidad accounts for half of all national lottery ticket sales. In 2012, news of the new tax and continuing economic crisis cut Gordo de Navidad sales by 8%. The Finance Ministry hasn't learned yet that raising taxes so much that consumption falters is the same as reducing revenues.
