UK to nearly double online gaming duty as Rachel Reeves' budget targets gambling sector
Britain will almost double the tax on online casinos and betting firms from next year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday, in a move expected to raise more than a billion pounds annually and intensify pressure on one of the country’s fastest-growing gambling sectors.
Remote Gaming Duty (RGD) will rise from 21% to 40% from April 2026, while a new General Betting Duty for online sports wagers will increase to 25% from 15% in 2027, excluding horse racing, spread betting, pool bets, and retail shops. Bingo duty will be scrapped, and casino gaming duty bands frozen.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates the changes will raise £1.1 billion ($1.46 billion) a year by 2029-30, though the figure would have reached £1.8 billion without an expected drop in betting volumes and a shift by some punters to illicit offshore sites. The government said operators are likely to pass on up to 90% of the duty increases to customers, in the form of less attractive odds and bonuses.
Shares in UK gambling stocks swung sharply after the OBR accidentally published the duty changes before the budget speech. Evoke, the owner of William Hill and 888, fell more than 18%, while Rank jumped 10% and Ladbrokes owner Entain rose 3.4%, buoyed partly by the abolition of bingo duty and expectations that smaller competitors may exit the market.
All three companies warned of profit hits. Entain forecasts a £100 million ($132 million) reduction in underlying earnings next year and £150 million in 2027. Evoke expects an additional £135 million in duty costs, while Rank projected a £40 million hit to operating profit.
Reeves defended the decision, saying online gambling is “associated with the highest levels of harm.” She linked the revenue to funding the government’s plan to lift the two-child limit on child benefit.
The industry reacted with anger. Entain said it was “deeply appalled” by the scale of the increase, while the Betting & Gaming Council called the changes a “devastating hammer blow”.
“The increases are a devastating hammer blow to tens of thousands of people working in the industry,” said BGC chief executive Grainne Hurst. “The government’s budget is a massive win for the incredibly harmful, unsafe, unregulated gambling black market.”
Treasury Committee chair Meg Hillier backed the move, saying Reeves had “rightly refused to bow to industry scaremongering.” Online slots and other remote games, she said, “can quickly drain the bank balances of vulnerable people after just a few clicks of a button on a phone.”
To address expected migration to unlicensed operators, the government will provide £26 million over three years to the Gambling Commission to combat illegal gambling sites.
The overhaul follows an April proposal by HMRC and the Treasury to consolidate three existing gambling tax categories into a single remote gambling duty. Think tanks had pushed for rates as high as 50%, while former PM Gordon Brown urged a broader £3 billion tax rise to fund anti-poverty measures.
The UK gambling sector generated £12.6 billion from customers last year.
https://www.yogonet.com/international/news/2025/11/27/116521-uk-to-nearly-double-online-gaming-duty-as-rachel-reeves-39-budget-targets-gambling-sector