Dutch gaming tax hits 37.8% as the KOA market's revenue bet backfires

The Netherlands opened its regulated online market in October 2021 with the KOA regime — kansspelen op afstand, remote games of chance — and quickly became a case study in how a mature European market prices its tax. Three years on, the Dutch story is less about licensing design than about a tax experiment that has, on the government’s own numbers, failed to deliver.

One licence, one market

Under the KOA framework the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) issues a single remote-gambling licence that covers casino games, sports betting and horse-race betting together — a simpler structure than the vertical-by-vertical models used in Italy or Spain. Land-based casino gambling remains separate, with Holland Casino holding the physical-casino monopoly. The first cohort of five-year licences dates from the 2021 opening and is now moving through renewal.

The KSA has tightened the operating rules around that licence. From 1 January 2026 new licensing policy rules (Beleidsregels vergunningverlening kansspelen op afstand 2026) raised the compliance bar for applicants, and from April 2026 the fee for a new remote licence rose from €48,000 to €61,300. Neither change reshaped the market. The tax did.

The tax that climbed three times

Dutch gambling tax has risen in three annual steps: 30.5% of GGR in 2024, 34.2% from 1 January 2025, and 37.8% from 1 January 2026. On top of the headline rate sits a KSA levy of roughly 1.95%, pushing the effective burden close to 40% of gross gaming revenue — among the heaviest in Europe for a competitive licensed market.

The stated logic was straightforward: a maturing market can bear a higher rate, and the Treasury wanted the revenue. The outcome was not. Against a projection of roughly €108 million in additional receipts for 2025, the actual uplift came in at around €2 million — a shortfall wide enough to be described in the sector press as a fiscal “black hole.” Rather than a windfall, the rise produced almost no incremental revenue at all.

Why the numbers missed

The mechanism behind the miss is the same one that haunts every high-tax regulated market: elasticity and leakage. When the effective take approaches 40% of GGR, operators respond by trimming marketing and bonusing, tightening promotional generosity and, at the margin, reducing the aggressiveness with which they compete for players. Some players, meanwhile, drift toward unlicensed sites that carry no Dutch tax and can therefore offer better value. Higher headline rate, lower base, flat revenue.

That dynamic has put the increase back on the political table. With the 2025 receipts so far below forecast, a debate over whether to pause or reverse the escalation is live in The Hague — an unusual position for a tax that only reached its top step in January 2026. The KSA, for its part, has continued to press on channelisation and compliance, but the authority does not set the rate.

The channelisation question

The Dutch market’s credibility rests on channelisation — keeping players inside the licensed system. A tax that raises no money while widening the price gap between licensed and unlicensed offerings is, from a channelisation standpoint, close to the worst of both worlds: it neither funds the state nor strengthens the regulated market’s competitive position. That is precisely why the Netherlands has become the reference case cited whenever another jurisdiction proposes a steep GGR rise.

What operators and suppliers should watch

For operators, the near-term question is whether the 37.8% rate holds or is walked back, and how the KSA’s tightened 2026 licensing rules interact with the renewal cycle now under way. For suppliers, the Dutch market remains attractive in structure — one clean licence covering multiple verticals — but the margin math has changed materially since 2024. And for every other European treasury eyeing gambling duty as a revenue lever, the Netherlands is the cautionary data point.

The Dutch case sits alongside the UK’s move to a 40% Remote Gaming Duty and other 2025–26 fiscal tightening across the continent. The moving pieces are tracked in the iGaming regulatory tracker, and the broader pattern of European tax escalation is set out in the State of European iGaming 2026 report.

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