UK Gambling Tax Increases Confirmed: Online Casino and Sports Betting Taxes Up

The UK government has announced increases to remote gaming duty and online general betting duty, with machine games duty being frozen, in measures the government predicts will raise more than £1 billion per year for the state by 2029/30.

After months of speculation, Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed in the Autumn Budget that remote gaming duty, paid on online casino betting, will rise from 21% to 40% of gross profit from April 2026. General betting duty, paid on online sports betting, will go up from 15% to 25% in April 2027, but will remain at 15% in land-based settings.

Horseracing has been spared from the increase, with the tax rate paid on racing remaining at 15% both in retail and online. While this may be seen as a victory for the sport, the impact could be felt later down the line, as operators may potentially cut budget for horseracing meets as a result of the greater tax burden.

Machine games duty, which is paid on land-based terminals and is taxed at different rates dependent on the stake size, has been frozen, and bingo duty will be scrapped from its current 10% rate.
No single RBGD

While it had been anticipated tax increases would be introduced, the announced measures differ from what was proposed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in May. The DCMS had proposed a remote betting and gaming duty, which would be a single remote betting tax and would have replaced the system of three separate remote betting taxes. However, this has not come to pass.

In summary, these are the remote betting taxes UK gambling operators will pay from April 2026:

• Remote gaming duty, payable on games of chance. This will increase from 21% of gross profit to 40% in April 2026.

• General betting duty, payable on fixed-odds bets with a bookmaker, on sports and financial spread bets, bets made through a betting exchange, and on pool bets (bets not at fixed-odds) on horse and dog racing. This will remain at 15% of gross profit for land-based betting, but will go up to 25% online. The 25% rate will come into force in April 2027 and excludes self-service betting terminals, spread betting, pool bets, and horseracing.

• Pool betting duty, payable on bets not at fixed-odds apart from those on horse and dog racing. This will remain at 15% of gross profit.

The impact of the tax increase on the gambling industry

The government has estimated this will reduce yield by around one third, with the expectation that operators will seek to work around about 90% of the duty increases by increasing prices or reducing payouts. This is expected to lead to a reduction in consumer demand, which will reduce the yield from the measure by £500 million by 2029/30.

While the Budget was officially announced by Reeves at 1230pm UK time, the Office for Budget Responsibility published the Budget in error a few hours beforehand. The government said it will investigate why this happened.
Shares down and up

Share prices for some of the leading UK operators decreased in the wake of the Budget being announced. Shares in Flutter Entertainment, owner of Paddy Power, Betfair, and Sky Bet, dropped from £14.97 at the start of trading to £14.33 just after midday, but this has since recovered to £15.02. At Entain, owner of Ladbrokes and Coral, shares dropped from £7.47 to £7.06, before recovering to £7.73. At William Hill owner Evoke meanwhile, shares dropped from 38p to 29.8p, before moving up to 33.1p.