SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
HMRC has launched a consultation seeking feedback on “the tax treatment of remote gambling” to be applied on UK licences.
The consultation will run for a period of 12 weeks, closing at midnight on 21 July 2025, with stakeholders invited to submit responses via an online form.
A revision of the current structure of remote gambling duties is due, as online gambling has become the dominant form of gambling participation, generating £6.9bn in Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) annually.
As such, the UK government will review options to merge the three existing tax categories — Remote Gaming Duty, General Betting Duty, and Pool Betting Duty — into the single standard of Remote Betting and Gaming Duty (RBGD).
The consultation will not consider feedback on the rate of tax applied to the Remote Betting & Gaming Duty (RBGD) – prioritising technical feedback on its alignment and applicability.
The current structure taxes Remote Gaming Duty (covering online slots, games, poker, and bingo) at 21% of gross profits, charged on a place of consumption (POC) basis.
HMRC applies a three-tier charge for General Betting Duty: 15% for fixed-odds bets, 10% for sports spread bets, and 3% for financial spread bets.
Pool Betting is taxed at 15% of gross profits, a charge solely applied to sports pools, as HMRC excludes charges on horse racing and greyhound pools.
The new system will apply a single tax rate using the POC principle, aligning all charges under a unified format to simplify Remote Gambling tax duties for HMRC and related parties.
Since 2014, all remote gambling (online) has been taxed on a POC basis — if the customer is in the UK, the operator must pay UK gambling taxes, regardless of the business’s preferred domicile.
HMRC states that it will consider feedback to modernise the structure of remote gambling:
“The tax system needs to keep pace with the developments and innovation that have seen the UK-facing remote gambling sector change significantly in recent years.
“The government believes that the time is now right to consider further reform to create a modern and coherent tax system that is simpler to use for the UK-facing remote gambling industry.”
A proposed increase in industry taxes was rejected by Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in the Autumn Budget of 2024.
The Chancellor rejected proposals by Think Tanks to apply a “polluter pay principle” on UK gambling licences, in lieu of the forthcoming compliance changes of the Gambling Review. The Budget confirmed that HMRC would review the tax framework for remote gambling by 2026.
