What is the current Remote Gaming Duty rate?

From 1 April 2026 the rate is 40% of a provider's profits from remote gaming with UK persons, up from 21%. The increase was announced at Budget 2025. A separate new rate of General Betting Duty, 25% on remote bets, is due from 1 April 2027, with remote betting on UK horse racing kept at 15%.

How is Remote Gaming Duty calculated?

The duty is charged on profits for each accounting period: the gaming payments due from UK customers minus the amounts paid out as prizes. Where the April 2026 rate change fell part-way through an accounting period, the 40% rate applies only to profits arising from that date. The base is therefore close to gross gaming yield rather than turnover.

Regulatory

Remote Gaming Duty

Reviewed by iGaming Times editorial teamLast reviewed 16 October 2026

What is Remote Gaming Duty?

The UK tax on the profits of online gaming operators from customers in the United Kingdom, charged on gross gaming yield regardless of where the operator is based.

Key takeaways

Remote Gaming Duty taxes online gaming profits from UK customers, wherever in the world the operator is based.
As a point of consumption tax, it ended the model of serving British customers from low-tax jurisdictions without paying UK duty.
Rate rises pit operators' channelisation warnings against public health arguments, and channelisation is hard to measure.

Why it matters

Remote Gaming Duty is a point-of-consumption tax, so liability follows the customer rather than the licence. That design ended the arrangement whereby operators served British customers from low-tax jurisdictions and paid nothing domestically, bringing Britain into line with markets such as Italy, France, Spain and Denmark that already taxed licensed online gambling locally.

Rate changes are therefore the most direct lever a Treasury has over the sector, and each proposed increase produces the same argument. Operators contend that raising duty compresses the margin available to fund promotions and product, making the licensed offer less competitive against unlicensed sites that pay nothing, so a higher rate on a shrinking base may not raise the expected revenue. Public health bodies contend that a less generous licensed product is a desirable outcome in itself.

Which account is right depends on channelisation, which is precisely the figure nobody can measure well.

The bottom line

Remote Gaming Duty taxes the customer's location rather than the operator's. Every argument about its rate is really an argument about how many players would leave.

Sources

Remote Gaming Duty (Excise Notice 455a) - HM Revenue and Customs (GOV.UK)
Gambling duty changes - HM Revenue and Customs (GOV.UK)