The Dutch government was sure that increasing gambling taxes would lead to a great improvement in public finances. But a shared monitoring document released by the Netherlands' Ministry of Finance and the gambling regulator, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has revealed that the gambling tax hikes in the country only brought in a small portion of the expected proceeds. The deficit is large enough to trigger serious doubts about the initial assumptions of the policy.
The tax was initially raised from 30.5% to 34.2% at the beginning of 2025 and then increased to 37.8% in 2026. Revenue from these tax increases was expected to be around €108 million in 2025 and €216 million in 2026. The actual results were an increase of only about €2 million in 2025 and a projected €57 million in 2026.
The report points to a diminishing tax base being the main reason. Several major upheavals happened almost simultaneously to the market, and each one lowered overall gambling participation and consequently taxable gambling revenues.
The player protection measures, which are to a great extent responsible for the decline in gambling revenues, do have a significant social value. However, the result is that they have directly affected the amount of taxable gambling activity in the country.
Physical gambling premises had some of the worst consequences. Casino and gaming hall visits had fallen by some 11% year-on-year between the first quarters of 2025 and 2026. Operators pointed to compressed margins as one of the main reasons for closures.
State operators have not been spared either. Holland Casino recorded a hit of around €27 million in pre-tax profits in 2025 attributable to the tax increase. The Nederlandse Loterij predicted losses of about €16 million during the same period.
However, one aspect was more or less unchanged. Licensed operators maintained their charitable giving, with payments to charities increasing slightly by 1.8%, and donations to sports falling very marginally by 3.6%.
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