The Statutory Levy: Who Pays It and Where the Money Goes

The instrument and the date

The charge was created by the Gambling Levy Regulations 2025, made under the Gambling Act 2005 and commenced on 6 April 2025. The regulations are published in full as SI 2025/213. Before them, operators contributed to research, education and treatment on a voluntary basis, at a level each operator chose; the levy ended that discretion by fixing a percentage for each licensed sector.

The levy is collected by the Gambling Commission, and the proceeds are directed under strategic direction set by government rather than by the Commission alone. The money is ring-fenced for research, prevention and treatment of gambling harm. The first annual payments fell due by 1 October following commencement.

The rates, by sector

The regulations set a different percentage for each licensed sector, applied to the operator's relevant revenue rather than to turnover or to profit. The band runs from 0.1 per cent to 1.1 per cent, and the sectors carrying each end of it are a long way apart:

• Remote operators — online casino, betting and bingo — pay the top rate of 1.1 per cent.
• Land-based casinos and land-based bookmakers pay 0.5 per cent.
• Bingo premises pay 0.2 per cent.
• The lowest band in the regulations is 0.1 per cent.

Quoting 1.1 per cent as the levy rate is the most common error in coverage of it, and it matters because the gap between the bands is the policy: the rate rises with the regulatory assessment of risk attached to the product and the channel, which is why the remote sector carries roughly eleven times the percentage of the lowest band. Government estimated the levy would raise in the region of £90 million to £100 million a year across all sectors.

What the levy is not

It is not a tax on winnings. British players pay no tax on gambling winnings, and the levy does not change that: it is a charge on the licensee's revenue, assessed and paid at operator level.

It is not a deduction from a deposit or a balance. Nothing in the regulations permits an operator to pass the levy on as a line item against a customer account, and an operator's own terms cannot create such a charge without running into the fairness and transparency requirements in licence condition 7.1.1.

It is not the same thing as gambling duty. Remote gaming duty and general betting duty are tax, collected by HMRC under separate legislation, and they are unaffected by the levy.

And it is not voluntary, which is the whole point of it. The level of an individual operator's contribution is no longer a matter of reputation or of negotiation, and an operator cannot advertise generosity in an area where the percentage is now fixed by statute.

Why it changed

The voluntary arrangement had two structural weaknesses that the regulations address directly. Contributions varied widely between operators of similar size, so the burden fell unevenly; and the bodies receiving the money depended on the continued goodwill of the industry they were studying and criticising. A statutory charge, collected by the regulator and distributed under government direction, separates the funding of research and treatment from the commercial decisions of the operators being researched.