The Dutch Ministry of Finance and the gambling regulatory authority KSA jointly released an embarrassing monitoring report—after two rounds of increases in gambling tax rates, the additional money actually collected by the treasury was negligible. The awkwardness of these numbers deserves to be laid out directly: On January 1, 2025, the tax rate was increased from 30.5% to 34.2%, and the Ministry of Finance expected to collect an additional 108 million euros that year, but only about 2 million euros were actually collected—1.8% of the expected value. On January 1, 2026, it was raised to 37.8%, with an expected annual increase of 216 million euros, but currently, only about 57 million euros can be collected. In other words, the government originally thought that two rounds of tax increases would bring in more than 300 million euros, but in reality, the first year was almost fruitless. The report cautiously pointed out that it is not entirely possible to precisely isolate the independent impact of the tax rate increase, but the shrinkage of the tax base is the primary reason for the revenue gap—and the shrinkage itself is caused by other measures in the same set of policy tools.
Protecting players and protecting tax revenue are undermining each other, with casino visits falling by 11%
The report outlines a clear causal chain. In October 2024, the Netherlands implemented new player protection rules—a monthly net deposit limit of €300 for ages 18 to 23, and €700 for ages 24 and up. This was followed by two rounds of tightened advertising: a ban on TV program sponsorships in July 2024, and a ban on sports teams, clubs, and jersey sponsorships in July 2025. Each cut was made to "reduce gambling harm," but each cut also fell on the taxable gambling volume. After the revenue bonus from the 2024 European Championship faded, regulatory uncertainty further contracted the market. The physical side is also under pressure—from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026, casino and gaming hall visits decreased by about 11%, and the number of gaming halls continued to decline. Some offline operators publicly listed the tax rate increase as one of the factors contributing to compressed operating profits and closing venues.
The books of two state-owned entities more directly show the cumulative effect of taxes. Holland Casino's pre-tax profits decreased by about 27 million euros (2025) and 54 million euros (2026); Nederlandse Loterij's corporate tax, statutory fees, and profits combined decreased by about 16 million euros and 34 million euros. The shrinking profits of these two state-owned operators, in turn, partially offset the fiscal gains brought by the increase in gambling taxes—more collected with the left hand, less paid with the right hand, further leveling the net effect on the treasury.
Legal businesses are bleeding, yet charitable donations remain unchanged—the "innocents" of the tax increase
Another easily overlooked data point is that licensed operators' donations to charities and sports causes were basically unaffected. Between 2024 and 2025, charitable payments increased slightly by 1.8%, and sports donations decreased slightly by 3.6%—the report found no "strong evidence" that the first round of tax rate increases had a substantial impact on charitable donations. In other words, while the tax increase squeezed the profits of operators and the financial statements of state-owned entities, the charity sector held steady.
Readers following the PASA official website should be able to read a familiar story in these numbers—tax increase → tax base shrinkage → actual revenue far below expectations, which has been repeatedly played out in multiple countries in Africa, Europe, and Latin America. The peculiarity of the Netherlands lies in the fact that the cause of the tax base shrinkage is not only players fleeing to offshore platforms (as shown in the KSA annual report, the market share of licensed parties is declining), but also the same government's other hand implementing player protection policies—deposit limits and advertising bans are indeed effective in reducing gambling consumption, but the reduced consumption also exits the tax statistics. The joint report by the Ministry of Finance and KSA did not provide policy recommendations, but the data itself has already laid out the problem: limiting the scale of gambling while relying on gambling taxes to fill the treasury are inherently contradictory tasks. Before this contradiction is addressed by policymakers, the 37.8% tax rate may just be an accelerator that continues to shrink the legal market and let expectations continue to fall short.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
Original deep channel for gambling: https://t.me/gamblingdeep
Free data reports: @pasa_research
PASA Matrix: @pasa002_bot
PASA official website: https://www.pasa.news
