Regulatory
Remote Gaming Duty
Definition
The British tax on the profits of online gambling operators taking bets from customers in Great Britain, charged on gross gaming yield regardless of where the operator is based.
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, and it has since been copied widely.
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.