The Growing Imbalance Between Online Bingo and Land-Based Bingo Taxation

Before 10am and on one coffee in, I’ve already had my morning counterarguments. One gentleman argued online bingo should be in a "40% bracket" because online casino sites mainly pull people in with slots, and another, for my tax-and-jobs argument, was “the UK gets the duty from Gibraltar anyway, so what’s the problem?”

Online bingo has been dragged into a 40% Remote Gaming Duty designed for high-velocity slots and casino, while land-based bingo duty is abolished and positioned as a “win for bingo”.

Yet a tenner on bingo, even online, can last several hours; a tenner on slots can be gone in minutes – that’s why many players (including me) choose bingo as their main way to play, not all of us play online slots.

Land-Based vs Online Realities

In the land-based clubs that I have visited, the bingo hall is on one side of the building, and a large section of slot machines is positioned on the other, often near the entrance/exit. But the UK taxes these differently.

Online, that distinction has effectively been wiped out, but it's the same principle: you enter a bingo site, and you see the slots first. You exit a bingo game, and you might hit the slot lobby before another bingo game.

Where Consumer Protections Actually Sit

Another irony: online is where the strongest consumer protections actually sit – deposit limits, time-outs, reality checks, spend data and automated flags. On the high street, there’s no invisible limit standing next to a player saying, “That’s enough, stop feeding the machine now”, yet it is the online channel that is being priced as if it is always the greater harm.

If bingo is a “cultural asset”, like Reeves has said, that asset should clearly include those who play online because many can’t or won’t go out – mobility, caring, cost of living all play a part.

Tax Discrepancies and Motives

This is where I feel this tax discrepancy between online and land-based is not all about gambling harms, but another motive.

So my other counterargument this morning was to a Gibraltar article. I had argued that this is likely more about a tax leak than about gambling harms, since offshore operations are mostly outside the country. They had argued, "Remote Gaming Duty and General Betting Duty are paid in the UK on UK players, regardless of where the teams sit." - a fair point.

But.. isn't the tax leak beyond duty? Yes, Remote Gaming Duty and General Betting Duty are paid in the UK on UK players, regardless of where the teams sit. But once you zoom out from that single line item, the leak becomes obvious: many big brands structure things so profits, IP and higher-value roles sit in low-tax hubs like Gibraltar, with lower corporation tax and no VAT on gambling.

That means less UK corporation tax, less PAYE/NIC and less VAT-able spend than if the same operations were fully onshore, while small UK affiliates like me pay full UK rates on much thinner margins, and even compete with non-UK advertisers. Remember, Rachel is trying to claw out as much tax as possible, looking for leaks; she has even done so with Shein and other offshore fast-fashion retail brands by raising import taxes. No more fast fashion unless the Government sees a return.

Impact on Jobs and the Sector

So yes, everyone has their own opinions and angles on this, but the logic is pretty clear: while she has harmed UK jobs in the gambling industry with a rushed approach.. and almost certainly without proper research into who this actually hurts! Her political logic seems to be that the UK gains more tax by protecting land-based venues. More jobs onshore, more NI, more PAYE, more business rates, more visible economic activity she can point to.

If policymakers genuinely believe bingo is culturally important, the logical step was to keep bingo on its own rate – online and offline – rather than lumping it in with slots and then pretending that’s support for the sector.

Misrepresenting the Product and the People

Online bingo is the same as land-based, just not fully British. It’s a slower, lower-margin product with a different audience; many play online because they can’t access land-based clubs. Treating it as if it’s identical to fast-paced slots doesn’t just misrepresent the product; it misrepresents the people who play it. But then, when you have machines lined up to play in a bingo hall, then there is no difference to gambling harms, except that online can be much safer if the tools are used properly.

Online bingo wasn’t asking for special treatment; it simply needed to be recognised as the same game, played by the same people, just through a different channel. Instead, it has been redistributed into a tax bracket designed for an entirely different product, creating a widening gap between land-based “wins” and online viability.

If Policymakers Truly Want Bingo to Survive

If policymakers truly want bingo to survive as a cultural asset, and genuinely care about UK jobs, UK tax receipts, and safer gambling outcomes, then online has to be part of that picture.

You can’t champion bingo on the high street while undermining the very ecosystem that keeps it alive for hundreds of thousands of players who don’t, can’t, or won’t attend a club.

Right now, that’s exactly what’s happening. And until that imbalance is acknowledged and corrected, the people who will feel it first aren’t corporations; it’s small bingo affiliates, workers, and the everyday players who want a slow, social, affordable way to play bingo at home with a cuppa.