Sweden raised its gambling tax from 18% to 22% of operators’ surplus on 1 July 2024. On 1 April 2026 it was Britain’s turn: Remote Gaming Duty went up from 21% to 40% of the profits operators make on UK players. The same day, Brazil raised the share of gross gaming revenue that licensed betting firms paid towards public purposes from 12% to 13%.
Less than six months later, Brazil closed its market. Provisional Measure 1.394, published on 25 September, banned fixed-odds betting on sport and online casino-style games. Deposits stopped that day, and the sites had ten days to go offline. The measure took effect at once, but Congress has 120 days to decide whether it becomes permanent law.
Until the ban, Brazil built online betting accounts around a national identity number, the CPF, as Sweden does around the personnummer. Britain asks for a verified name, date of birth and address instead. The difference reaches well beyond the sign-up page, into tax rules, refunds and self-exclusion registers.
Who pays tax, and on what
Britain taxes the operator and leaves the player alone. Remote Gaming Duty has applied on a place-of-consumption basis since 2014, so operators pay it on profits from UK customers wherever they are based. HMRC’s duty notice values promotional free plays in full, so a free £10 game of online poker adds £10 to stakes.
Players’ winnings sit outside the tax net. They are not chargeable gains under section 51 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992, and HMRC’s Business Income Manual says betting and gambling as such are not trading, so a punter pays no tax on profits and gets no relief for losses.
Sweden taxes the operator and, in some cases, the player. Licensed operators pay 22% of their surplus for each calendar month, and winnings from a Swedish-licensed site are tax-free. Winnings from an unlicensed site aimed at the Swedish market, which Skatteverket says can mean Swedish text, marketing in Sweden and deposits and withdrawals in kronor, are among those taxed at 30% of net gains.
Brazil taxed both ends. On top of the operators’ share of gross gaming revenue, Law 14.790 of 2023 charged players 15% income tax on each year’s net prizes above the exempt first band of the income tax table, after losses on the same kind of bet.
Why a foreign licensee counts as new in Britain
An operator’s home country makes no difference to its British tax bill, and a licence from home gives it no right to trade here either. A Swedish online licence costs 230,000 kronor to apply for and lasts at most five years. Brazil charged R$30m for each five-year authorisation, which could cover as many as three brands, and the provisional measure will end them all on 25 October without refunding fees or paying compensation.
Before the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, a company needed a British operating licence only if it kept at least one piece of remote gambling equipment in Great Britain. Section 1 of the 2014 Act changed the test to whether a firm’s facilities are used in Great Britain.
The Act’s explanatory notes spell out the result: an overseas operator must get a licence or stop British consumers using its site. So a group based in Stockholm or São Paulo may not take British customers until the Gambling Commission licenses it. Once granted, that licence has no fixed end date under section 110 of the Gambling Act 2005, though its fees rise with the size of the business: the application alone can cost up to £165,069.
A licensed foreign group then arrives in Britain as a newcomer. The two-to-three-year window that gambling.com applies to new casino online sites in the UK runs from each brand’s UK launch, and the page counts UK market entries as new, alongside completely new operators, relaunches and fresh brands from established groups.
On that definition, years of trading under a Swedish licence would not stop a brand being new to British players.
The rules side by side
A getworld.co.uk piece on the global growth of lotteries noted that countries set different rules on gambling, tax and prize claims, and that platforms ignoring local law face fines and blocked access. The table compares three of them, giving Brazil’s rules as they stood until the ban.
| Policy area | Great Britain | Sweden | Brazil |
| Operator tax | Remote Gaming Duty of 40% on UK profits from 1 April 2026 | 22% of monthly surplus since 1 July 2024 | 13% of gross gaming revenue to public purposes from 1 April 2026 |
| Tax on winnings | None | None from licensed sites; 30% of net gains from unlicensed sites aimed at Sweden | 15% of yearly net prizes above the exempt band |
| Licence term | No fixed end date | Up to five years | Five years; all end on 25 October 2026 |
| Identity at sign-up | Name, date of birth and address checked before any play | Residents only; personnummer or equivalent, checked by electronic ID | CPF and facial recognition; access re-confirmed after 30 idle minutes |
| Paying in | No credit cards since 14 April 2020 | No credit-financed play; deposits only from a regulated payment provider | Payer-identified methods from the player’s own account; no credit cards, cash, boletos or crypto |
| Joining self-exclusion | Name, addresses, date of birth, emails and mobile numbers | Electronic ID, for example BankID | gov.br account at silver or gold level |
| Status on 12 October 2026 | Licensed market | Licensed market | Ban in force since 25 September; court challenges and a Congress vote pending |
The provisional measure revoked most of Law 14.790 and the betting chapter of the 2018 lottery law, but both still apply to anything that happened while the authorisations ran.
Industry bodies ANJL and IBJR asked the Supreme Federal Court to suspend the measure, and ANSEJA filed a separate action, ADI 8.024, seeking an injunction. One licensee has since won a federal court order in São Paulo that for now keeps it online until the authorisations lapse. Until the Supreme Federal Court and Congress decide, the Brazil column could still change.
How the money has to move
Britain banned credit card payments for online gambling in 2020. Sweden’s Gambling Act forbids licensees to allow or take part in credit-financed gambling, with a narrow exception for some lotteries. Licensees may take deposits only from a payment service provider covered by Sweden’s Payment Services Act.
Brazil anchored its payment rules to the bettor’s own bank account. A Finance Ministry ordinance of 2024, Portaria 615, permitted only methods that identify the payer, such as Pix, bank transfers, debit and prepaid cards, and only from the account registered with the betting site. It barred credit cards, cash, boletos (bank payment slips) and crypto assets. The ministry presented the rules as a curb on money laundering and the card ban as a guard against household debt. Under Law 14.790, prizes could be paid only into an account in the bettor’s own name.
The provisional measure put that system to work closing the market. It bars banks and payment institutions, instant payment systems included, from processing bets except to wind down and return money. The Senate’s news service set out the refund timetable: operators had 7 and 8 October to tell banks what each customer was owed, identified by CPF number.
Banks have until 14 October to pay that money into an active account in the customer’s own name, preferably the one it came from. From that date, sums they cannot return will go to a dedicated account at Caixa Econômica Federal, and an operator that fails its refund duties faces a daily fine of R$200,000. Rules written against debt and laundering have become the route for handing balances back, person by person, by identity number.
Proving who is playing
Sweden checks a number. Only people resident or permanently staying in Sweden may register for online gambling, and each gives a name, an address and a personnummer or equivalent, which the operator must verify through reliable electronic identification or an equivalent method. A temporary account can let play start before the details are checked, but identity must be established by the first payout at the latest.
Brazil’s regulated sites, open from 2025, had to identify each new player by CPF and facial recognition, and a player idle for 30 minutes had to confirm access again, with a location check.
British rules key the check to three personal details instead. A licensed operator must confirm a customer’s name, date of birth and address before letting them gamble, a rule in force since 2019. Britain’s minimum age for online casino play is 18, the same as Sweden’s and as Brazil’s was.
HMRC sets its own address test for duty. Under its Two UK Indicators Rule, a customer who declares a non-UK address still counts as a UK person if two current items point to the UK, such as the address linked to a bank statement, credit card or driving licence, or a phone number’s country code.
Self-exclusion registers and the data behind them
A self-exclusion register has to recognise the same person at every operator, and each country built its scheme on the identity data it already used. GAMSTOP, Britain’s scheme, takes a name, a current address and postcode, previous postcodes, a date of birth, and current and past email addresses and mobile numbers, then confirms identity through TransUnion questions or Onfido facial recognition.
Operators must check the list daily and whenever a customer logs in or registers. Players pick a minimum term of half a year, a year or five years, and once an exclusion is removed, GAMSTOP tells operators for seven more years that the person was previously self-excluded. The scheme says more than half a million people in the UK have used it, and its pages give the National Gambling Helpline’s number, 0808 8020 133, a free line staffed by GamCare; the Commission gives Wales its own NHS number, 0808 2819 265.
Spelpaus asks a player to identify with Mobilt BankID, BankID, Freja eID+ or a foreign eID, then offers 10 days, one, three or six months, or an open-ended exclusion lasting at least 12 months. None can be ended early. It covers all gambling that needs registration, online, in shops and at tracks, and its site showed more than 143,000 people excluded on 12 October 2026.
Brazil’s central platform, opened by the Finance Ministry in December 2025, required a gov.br account at silver or gold level and a stated reason, such as money trouble or a professional’s advice. It then blocked every federally authorised betting site for at least a month, and anyone choosing no end date had 30 days to change their mind. The ministry reported more than 650,000 self-block requests by the middle of 2026.
The totals are not like for like: GAMSTOP’s covers everyone who has used it, Spelpaus shows current exclusions and Brazil’s counts requests rather than people.
