Pool bets on horse or dog racing are currently charged with General Betting Duty (GBD) while all other pool bets are charged with Pool Betting Duty (PBD). This will be unchanged, but the method of calculating pool betting profits for duty purposes will be amended.
The same principles that will apply to pool betting will also apply for remote gaming (such as poker) where the operators make their money from participation charges or entry fees, or from a rake or deduction from stakes or prize pots.
Pool bets
For the purposes of GBD and PBD, pool bets will be described as ‘pooled prize bets’ or ‘ordinary bets’. A pooled prize bet is one where some or all of the customers’ money is assigned to a pool or prize fund from which winnings are paid. An ordinary pool bet is any bet that is neither a fixed-odds bet nor a pooled prize bet. An example of an ordinary pool bet would be a bet on a lottery where the
customer chooses their numbers and any winnings are the amount they would have won had they bought the winning ticket in that lottery.
Calculating pool betting profits
For ordinary pool bets an operator’s dutiable pool betting profits for an accounting period will be the receipts due from UK people minus any winnings paid to those customers within that accounting period. For pooled prize bets, an operator’s dutiable pool betting profits will be calculated by reference to any charges made to UK customers or by reference to any amounts taken from the pool by the operator.