Household gambling duties

The model calculates General Betting Duty, Pool Betting Duty, Remote Gaming Duty, Machine Games Duty, casino Gaming Duty incidence, Bingo Duty and Lottery Duty from supplied annual household bases. The gambling_duty output adds these seven components and enters household_tax and gov_tax once. The incidence assumption passes all duty to consumers. These inputs support household calculations; they do not establish population revenue estimates or repair existing survey data.

Periods and attribution¶

Coverage starts in 2024/25. Model period 2024 covers 6 April 2024 to 5 April 2025. The six statutory duty formulas apply dated rates within each interval of that fiscal year and weight each interval by its share of the year, using utils.excise.fiscal_year_segments. They assume each supplied annual base accrues uniformly. For example, Finance Act 2026 raises Remote Gaming Duty on 1 April 2026: FY2025 contains 360 days at 21% and five at 40%. The remote betting change on 1 April 2027 similarly affects five days of FY2026. A reform dated within a fiscal year is split the same way. The casino incidence proxy takes one value per model year instead, as described below.

Each input supplies a nonnegative, already-attributed dutiable base in pounds. All inputs default to zero. A data provider must allocate operator liabilities to households, preserving statutory netting, adjustments and exemptions before supplying these bases. A household’s raw signed stakes minus winnings do not satisfy this contract. The formulas do not reproduce operator accounting periods or loss carry-forward. They floor each input at zero, so a negative input gives no duty and does not offset another base. Positive inputs before 2024 produce default zero because those model years remain outside the implemented coverage.

The full pass-through assumption follows the issue’s household-incidence proposal. The OBR’s November 2025 forecast assumed around 90% pass-through of the Budget 2025 increases; that behavioural assumption about changes is not a baseline incidence fraction in this implementation. This implementation does not reproduce the OBR’s demand or substitution costing. Government receipts and household incidence use the same attributed base here.

Source: OBR November 2025 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, paragraph 3.40.

General Betting Duty¶

Supply these separate, non-overlapping inputs:

The rate is 15% for fixed odds, racing pools and exchange commission, 3% for financial spreads and 10% for other spreads. Qualifying other remote fixed-odds bets use 25% from 1 April 2027. Bets wholly on UK horse racing, qualifying licensed-premises self-service terminals and pool bets retain their existing treatment. On-course bets are exempt and must not enter a dutiable input. A terminal used to bet on future real events differs from a gaming machine subject to Machine Games Duty.

Sources: Finance Act 2014, Chapter 1, Finance Act 2026, section 87 and HMRC gambling duty guidance.

Pool Betting Duty¶

Supply pool_betting_net_receipts, the household’s attributed dutiable pool betting base, including statutory additions and excluding qualifying community-benefit bets. The rate is 15%. Exclude fixed-odds bets and pools wholly related to horse or dog racing; those racing pools enter General Betting Duty. A mixed pool does not become exempt from Pool Betting Duty merely because one leg concerns horse or dog racing.

Source: Finance Act 2014, Chapter 2.

Remote Gaming Duty¶

Supply remote_gaming_net_losses, the household’s attributed chargeable, non-exempt remote gaming profits base. The rate is 21% in the starting coverage, rising to 40% on 1 April 2026. The input excludes gaming already charged with another gambling tax and other exemptions in section 161. Remote bingo enters this base only where chargeable: section 161 also exempts UK licensed bingo and specified unlicensed bingo with mixed remote and in-person participation. Do not allocate the same gaming to another duty base.

Sources: Finance Act 2014, sections 154 to 162, Finance Act 2026, section 86 and HMRC historical rates.

Machine Games Duty¶

Supply attributed dutiable net takings separately:

Classify the entire machine using all dutiable games it offers. Exactly £5 per play remains within the standard-rate limit. A gambling category, one selected game or a premises type does not identify the tax class. The model introduces no average rate, machine-count weighting or premises allocation. A reform targeting betting shops needs a separate evidenced allocation of each tax class’s net takings by premises.

Sources: Finance Act 2012, Schedule 24 and HMRC Notice 452.

Higher-stake machines from 1 April 2027¶

In Budget 2026 the government said it would move machines with a maximum charge to play of more than £1, or a maximum prize of more than £100, from the standard rate of 20% to the higher rate of 25% from 1 April 2027. In Finance Bill 2026-27 the government will amend the stake and prize thresholds that set each machine’s type, and with it the rate (OOTLAR paragraph 1.50). Today, Finance Act 2012 Schedule 24 paragraph 5(3) puts every machine outside the lower-rate class with a highest charge of at most £5 in the standard-rate type. From 1 April 2027, such a machine stays at the standard rate only if its maximum charge is at most £1 and its maximum prize at most £100: a machine at exactly £1 and £100 stays at 20%, while £1 with a £500 prize, or £2 with a £100 prize, moves to 25%.

machine_games_standard_rate_higher_stake_net_takings is a subset of machine_games_standard_rate_net_takings, not a separate amount:

• The standard-rate input keeps its meaning: takings from every machine with a highest charge of at most £5 outside the lower-rate class. A dataset without the new input gives the duty before Budget 2026 in every year.

• HMRC’s standard-rate liabilities for periods before 1 April 2027 include the higher-stake machines, so a provider that builds the standard-rate input from them needs no change. From that date HMRC reports those machines at the higher rate. A provider that builds the inputs from later liabilities must add their takings back to the standard-rate input and leave them out of the higher-rate input. Take £100 of remaining standard-rate takings and £100 of higher-stake takings: the duty comes to £45. A provider that leaves the £100 out of the higher-rate input but doesn’t add it back gets £25; one that does neither gets £50.

• A data provider supplies the higher-stake share of that base, for example from the Gambling Commission’s machine yield by category. The class corresponds closely to Category B, whose limits (B1: £5 stakes; B2, B3 and B3A: £2 and £500; B4: £2 and £400) exceed one of the thresholds. Category C (£1 and £100) and Category D stay within them. The tax class turns on the highest charge and prize a machine actually offers, so a category split approximates it. The projection assumes 90.78% (see the higher-stake share).

• The duty floors the new input at zero and caps it at the standard-rate input. It never taxes takings that the standard-rate input leaves out.

Within the 6 April to 5 April model year, the change splits by day, as paragraph 6(6) (a machine that changes type) and paragraph 9(4) (a rate that changes) require within an accounting period. Model year 2026 charges the higher-stake part at 25% for 5 of its 365 days, 1 to 5 April 2027; model year 2027 and later charge all of it at 25%. For £1,000 of standard-rate takings, £400 of them higher-stake, the duty rises from £200 to £200.27 in 2026 and to £220 from 2027.

The dated switch gov.hmrc.gambling_duty.machine_games.higher_stake_machines_at_higher_rate turns on from 1 April 2027. Set it to false for the counterfactual without the change, or move its date to delay it. It shares fiscal-year segments with the rates, so a rate reform applies to the higher-stake part at whichever rate the switch selects.

The Treasury puts the measure at £135 million in 2027-28 and £130 million a year to 2031-32 (Budget 2026 policy costings, page 67). The Treasury grows its base with the OBR’s Machine Games Duty forecast and nets off a behavioural response: an elasticity of -0.95, a quarter of lost stakes moving to Remote Gaming Duty, general attrition and lower Corporation Tax. The model applies the rates statically to supplied takings and reproduces none of those responses.

Bingo Duty¶

Supply bingo_net_receipts, the household’s nonnegative share of dutiable bingo promotion profits after statutory adjustments and exemptions. Bingo Duty charged 10% before abolition on 1 April 2026. FY2025 therefore charges £3,600 on a uniform £36,500 attributed base: £100 per day × 360 days × 10%. FY2026 charges zero. The operator’s exemption where duty would be less than £1 does not create a household threshold. The supplied base must already reflect the operator’s treatment.

Exclude bingo exempt under the pre-repeal law, including wholly remote unlicensed bingo under section 17(2A). Chargeable remote gaming uses the separate Remote Gaming Duty contract, including its section 161 exemptions.

Sources: Betting and Gaming Duties Act 1981, section 17, as at 6 April 2024 and Finance Act 2026, section 88.

Lottery Duty¶

Supply national_lottery_ticket_spending, the chargeable consideration for National Lottery tickets and scratchcards. The rate is 12%, with no deduction for winnings or expenses. Section 25 includes amounts paid, given or debited in connection with the ticket. Where consideration falls below a shown ticket price, or no consideration is given, use the deemed shown price. Exempt lotteries and bingo are outside this input. The model’s initial parameter entry marks verified 2024/25 coverage and makes no earlier commencement claim.

Sources: Finance Act 1993, section 24, section 25 and HMRC Notice 458.

Casino Gaming Duty incidence¶

Supply land_based_casino_net_losses, the household’s nonnegative attributed dutiable casino gross gaming yield. The attribution includes applicable gaming charges, such as participation charges for equal-chance games, alongside stakes less prizes where the operator acts as banker. Exclude admission-only charges, machine games and gaming taxed or exempt under the other duties.

The household formula multiplies this base by the empirical assumption household.consumption.gambling.casino_effective_rate, initially 0.235487 (23.5487%). It holds that fraction constant from model year 2024 onwards. Like the other household consumption assumptions, the proxy takes one value per model year: the value in force on 1 January of the year in which the model year starts. Unlike a change to a statutory rate, a change to the proxy dated within a fiscal year is not split by day; it applies to a whole model year when it is in force on that 1 January. The proxy sits outside gov, where the reform routes read a bare year such as "2027" as a calendar year, so a day split would spread such a reform over two model years.

The approved proxy divides these official observations:

The exact division gives 0.2354871778104747736771859341. Rounding to six fractional decimals changes the arithmetic on that denominator by £124.89, below HMRC’s £1,000 source reporting unit. Casino machine yield of £231.47255869591993 million is excluded; machines use Machine Games Duty. The original HMRC ODS SHA-256 is 3979df37c0611cce371f80950bacac6bc5e9dad499c726f6138f838c882914e8; the original Gambling Commission workbook SHA-256 is ea5335233cc728f9c500d4ed3233bd996b60acb2cff11f271e0fcf002c8e1b6b.

The observations have different coverage. HMRC reports UK cash receipts with payment and accounting lags; the Gambling Commission reports GB licensed operator yield and marks the 2024/25 row provisional. Both source periods run 1 April to 31 March, while the model uses 6 April to 5 April. The division therefore supplies a documented incidence approximation, without establishing matched geography, taxpayers or accrual periods. Its numerical precision does not resolve those differences. Issue 2587 tracks review and refresh of the proxy.

Statutory Gaming Duty applies progressive bands to casino premises for an operator accounting period. The separate gov.hmrc.gambling_duty.gaming.normal_six_month_bands catalogue records the registered-premises, normal six-month schedule: 15% on the first £2,686,000, 20% on the next £1,852,000, 30% on the next £3,243,000, 40% on the next £6,845,000 and 50% thereafter. It excludes unregistered-gaming treatment and alternative accounting-period adjustments. Household annual losses never enter those bands.

The bands have not changed since 1 April 2022: HMRC’s rates page gives the same bands for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2026. The government froze them for 2026-27, “with the usual RPI uprating thereafter” (OBR November 2025 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, paragraph 3.39). Bands for accounting periods from 1 April 2027 are therefore expected to change but are not yet law, and the catalogue does not anticipate them. The programme registry’s verified_end_year: 2027 is deliberate: household outputs use the proxy, not the bands.

Changing the operator catalogue alone leaves the household proxy unchanged. Scoring a casino band reform requires operator yield distributions and an incidence mapping, or an explicitly supplied alternative effective fraction. The fixed proxy does not model behaviour, predict later effective rates or certify national receipts.

Sources: Finance Act 1997, sections 10 and 11, HMRC Notice 453, HMRC July 2026 tables and Gambling Commission 2024/25 industry statistics.

Projection¶

Each input declares its duty’s index, gov.economic_assumptions.indices.obr.per_capita.gambling_duty_bases.<duty>, and dataset projection grows it by the same duty’s series in yoy_growth.yaml (policyengine_uk/data/uprating_indices.yaml). A series grows the duty’s base, not its receipts: each year’s receipts divided by the rate the model charges that year. The model then applies its own rate changes once. Grown with receipts instead, the base would carry Remote Gaming Duty’s rise to 40% and the formula would charge 40% on it again.

Each series holds the base’s growth per person: one plus the base’s growth, over one plus ons.population growth, minus one, to six decimals. Dataset projection grows every household weight by ons.population, so each weighted input grows with its duty’s national base. Past PROJECTION_END_YEAR, policyengine-core scales each input by its index and each weight by the population index, so the weighted input keeps that path until create_economic_assumption_indices stops compounding, and both hold from then on. Grown by the base’s own growth, the weighted bases would count population growth twice and exceed Table 4.10 by 1.54% in 2031-32. uprate_council_tax divides each council tax bill’s growth by the growth in household weights for the same reason.

After 2031-32 the importer divides the base’s growth by one plus population growth in every year to 2073, the last year ons.population states. Each series’ last value stays in force after that, as population’s does.

policyengine_uk/utils/import_obr_forecasts.py writes the series from RECEIPTS_SERIES_SPECS. It reads each rate from the model’s parameter file and averages it over the OBR’s April-to-March year by days. The equations below round receipts and rates for display, and each result comes from the unrounded figures. Each duty’s rate comes out as follows:

• Remote Gaming Duty: 21% to 31 March 2026, 40% from 1 April 2026. Receipts grow 108.3% into 2026-27 (£2,752.0 million against HMRC’s £1,321.0 million); the base grows (2,752.0 / 40%) / (1,321.0 / 21%) − 1 = 9.38%.

• General Betting Duty: the remote part, 45.5% of the 2024-25 base, goes from 15% to 25% on 1 April 2027, so the rate on the whole base goes from 15% to 15% + 10% × 45.5% = 19.55%. Receipts grow 33.8% into 2027-28 (£655.6 million to £877.4 million); the base grows (877.4 / 19.55%) / (655.6 / 15%) − 1 = 2.70%. The shares come from Microcosm’s split of HMRC’s 2024-25 receipts by the Gambling Commission’s 2024-25 gross gambling yield, held fixed in every year. That split counts all remote horse racing as UK horse racing, which keeps 15%, so the part at 25% may be larger, and the 2.70% then overstates the base’s growth. Microcosm’s split gives spread betting no part, so it has no weight.

• Machine Games Duty: from 1 April 2027 the model charges the higher-stake part of the standard-rate base at the higher rate (see higher-stake machines). The OBR includes that rise and the measures announced since March in Table 4.10 (EFO paragraph 3.2), and says the rise “increases receipts by a further estimated £0.1 billion a year from 2027-28” (paragraph 4.45). The series divides the line by a rate that charges the higher-stake share of the standard-rate base, 90.78% (see the higher-stake share), at 25% from 2027-28. The importer weights each band by HMRC’s 2024-25 liabilities over its rate, so the rate on the whole base rises from 19.35% to 23.68%. Receipts grow 22.1% into 2027-28 (£677.1 million to £826.9 million); the base falls by (826.9 / 23.68%) / (677.1 / 19.35%) − 1 = −0.23%. The importer reads the date from gov.hmrc.gambling_duty.machine_games.higher_stake_machines_at_higher_rate and the rates from their parameter files, so the series and the formula read the same dates and rates.

  The OBR joins the Treasury’s two costings as measure 56 in policy Table 1.1, under the head Betting: the 25% rate and the move of liability to machine suppliers from April 2028. The Treasury nets off a behavioural response in its rate costing: an elasticity of −0.95, with a quarter of the stakes lost moving to Remote Gaming Duty, and a general attrition assumption. It estimates that moving liability to suppliers reduces non-compliance and brings payments forward (Budget 2026 policy costings, pages 67 and 68). Dividing the line by the rate that produced it keeps all of these in the base, as receipts over the rate does for every other duty. Taking the measure off the line instead would drop them, and the model’s static rates restore none of them.

• Gaming Duty: the household formula charges one effective rate, which does not change, so the base grows with receipts. The statutory bands do not enter: any change in the duty’s effective rate that the OBR forecasts stays in the base.

• Bingo Duty: 10% until Parliament abolished the duty from 1 April 2026. A zero rate leaves no base to divide out, so the importer holds the base at its 2025-26 level while the rate stays at zero. Per person the series falls as population grows, and the weighted base holds. Current law charges nothing whatever the base; a reform that charges Bingo Duty again charges that 2025-26 base in cash terms.

• Lottery Duty (12%) and Pool Betting Duty (15%): one rate each, so the base grows with receipts.

The series rest on these approximations:

• HMRC reports cash receipts, while the OBR forecasts accrued receipts in Table 4.10: its totals equal the “Betting and gaming taxes” row of the October 2026 Table 4.1, whose note reads “All taxes are on an accrued basis.” Growth into 2026-27 compares accrued 2026-27 receipts with cash 2025-26 receipts.

• Model years run from 6 April and the OBR’s from 1 April. A model year that takes in five days of a 1 April rate change charges them at the new rate, so FY2025 Remote Gaming Duty and FY2026 General Betting Duty exceed the published receipts by 1.2% and 0.4%, and FY2025 Bingo Duty falls short of them by 1.4%. With the higher-stake input at its share, FY2026 Machine Games Duty exceeds Table 4.10 by 0.31% for the same reason: the OBR charges no higher-stake machine at 25% in 2026-27, while the model charges 1 to 5 April 2027 at 25% in model year 2026.

• Two lines fall where no rate changes. The OBR forecasts Lottery Duty receipts of £830.5 million for 2026-27, which fall short of HMRC’s 2025-26 outturn of £980.1 million by 15.3%. It forecast £1,008.6 million for the same year in March 2026’s Table 3.10, lists no Lottery Duty measure in October’s policy table, and gives no reason in EFO paragraph 4.45. Pool Betting Duty receipts fall from £8.1 million in 2024-25 to £4.0 million in 2025-26 and a forecast £2.8 million in 2026-27, so its index falls by 65%.

The higher-stake share¶

MACHINE_GAMES_HIGHER_STAKE_SHARE in policyengine_uk/utils/import_obr_forecasts.py holds the share: 90.78% of standard-rate takings come from machines with a maximum charge above £1 or a maximum prize above £100. It divides the Gambling Commission’s 2024-25 gaming machine yield in Category B, £2,289.8 million, by that in Categories B and C, £2,522.3 million (Industry Statistics, April 2025 to March 2026 release, sheet 4, cells K34 and L34, revised figures). The 2007 regulations define a Category B machine as one outside Categories C and D, and the Commission gives Category C’s limits as a £1 charge and a £100 prize (Categories of Gaming Machine Regulations 2007, regulation 5; Gambling Commission, gaming machine categories). Category D enters neither side. Its money-prize machines charge at most 20p for at most £10 in cash, which puts them in the lower-rate class (Finance Act 2012, Schedule 24, paragraph 5(2)). Its other machines pay no cash prize, so their games fall outside the duty (paragraph 2(2)). A machine’s category caps its charge and prize, while the tax class turns on the highest charge and prize it actually offers, so the category split only approximates the class.

The statistics cover the premises the Commission licenses in Great Britain: arcades, betting shops, bingo halls and casinos. They leave out:

• pubs and other alcohol-licensed premises, which may hold only Category C and D machines;

• members’ and commercial clubs, which may hold Category B3A or B4 machines as well as C and D;

• Northern Ireland, outside the statistics’ Great Britain coverage.

HMRC’s 2024-25 standard-rate liabilities, £604.7 million at 20%, give a UK base of £3,023.7 million, £501.4 million (16.6%) more than the Commission’s Category B and C yield. Differences in definition and timing between gross gambling yield and dutiable net takings may account for part of it. Pubs’ Category C and D machines never pay the higher rate, so leaving them out pushes the share up, though skill-with-prize machines there fall outside the categories. Clubs’ taxable Category B4 machines pay it, so leaving them out pushes the share down. Legally operated Category B3A lottery machines pay no duty and enter neither side. If the whole difference stayed at 20%, the share would be £2,289.8 million over £3,023.7 million, 75.73%, and the 2027-28 base index would rise by 3.13% from its level at 90.78%. The Commission’s provisional 2025-26 figures give 91.41%. The importer holds the 2024-25 share in every year, as it does the band weights.

Datasets without the higher-stake input¶

No dataset supplies machine_games_standard_rate_higher_stake_net_takings yet. Until one does, machine_games_duty charges the standard rate on the whole standard-rate input, the rates before Budget 2026, on a base that grows by receipts over the rates after it. From 2027-28 the duty therefore falls short of Table 4.10 by 18.3%: the duty equals Table 4.10’s line times 19.35% / 23.68%. Two constructed households, weighted 700 and 1,900, hold the 2024-25 national bases between them, and their weighted duty comes to:

A dataset that sets the input to the share of its standard-rate input closes the gap. Before 2026-27 the input changes nothing; in 2026-27 it adds the five days at 25%.

Every input in the gambling folder declares an index, including machine_games_standard_rate_higher_stake_net_takings; policyengine_uk/tests/test_gambling_duty_base_projection.py fails for a new input that declares none.

Sources: OBR October 2026 Economic and Fiscal Outlook (receipts Table 4.10 and policy Table 1.1, in the detailed forecast tables zip file; receipts workbook SHA-256 d115705716d77b11c190385d41cb1924f30080c9331a8a386c04d4e65a368e95), HMRC July 2026 Betting and Gaming tables, Autumn Budget 2026 policy costings, pages 67 and 68, Microcosm’s 2024-25 gambling bases and the Gambling Commission’s Industry Statistics, April 2025 to March 2026 (workbook SHA-256 a6ea23b5ddff2f3839ebec2a8cc0d9a0817e218f5bf10921e0172ecae768da58).

Tax totals and fiscal classification¶

The seven component duties enter gambling_duty, which enters household and government taxes once. The fiscal partition assigns that head to Other HMRC taxes. OBR’s November 2025 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, Table A.5 footnote 5, places betting and gaming duties in that row. The model measures only the gambling part from supplied bases; residual Other HMRC taxes remain unmodelled. No Table 3.1 allocation is asserted. Removing the row from the partition’s list of rows with no household measure does not claim complete coverage of the row.

Source: OBR November 2025 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, Table A.5.

Data and coverage follow-ups¶

Released data need a separate mapping from gambling stakes and winnings to these dutiable bases. The mapping must distinguish remote and land-based products, avoid overlap, address survey under-recording and reconcile weighted totals with HMRC receipts using compatible periods and population coverage. The formulas make no allocation from recreation_consumption. Default-zero inputs do not demonstrate upstream data adoption or population coverage.

The reconciliation target is HMRC’s UK receipts for April 2024 to March 2025, the year of the casino proxy:

The cells are in Table_1_BG_receipts of the HMRC July 2026 tables, the file the casino proxy cites, reported in £000. The commentary on HMRC’s statistics page gives the same General Betting Duty, Pool Betting Duty and Lottery Duty figures, rounded. These are cash receipts for a 1 April to 31 March year, so a reconciliation must handle the timing, period and coverage differences described for the casino proxy.

The machine tax-class bases cannot score a betting-shop-only reform without joint tax-class-by-premises yield data. Premises shares alone do not identify that allocation, and machine counts do not provide yield weights. No assumption of independence between premises and tax class enters the model. Issue 2586 remains open for that contract and data work, alongside Microcosm 1359 and Chronos 381. The separate casino review remains under issue 2587.

Gambling removal from the VAT base also requires a comparable expenditure contract: subtracting net gambling losses from a gross-stakes consumption aggregate would mix bases. Data adoption, calibrated population receipts and VAT-base repair remain separate from this seven-family engine foundation.