South Africa's 20% Online Gambling Tax After the 2026 MTBPS: Still a Proposal, Costed on Top of Provincial Tax

Where the proposal stands on 26 October 2026

National Treasury published The case for a national online gambling tax on 25 November 2025. It proposes “a 20 per cent tax … on gross gambling revenue from online betting, including interactive gambling, which would be in addition to the currently applied provincial taxes” (section 7). Gross gambling revenue (GGR) is turnover less winnings paid to players. The paper is explicit that raising money is not the aim: “the main objective of the reform would not be to raise further revenue, but rather to discourage problem and pathological gambling”.

Since then the timetable has moved twice. We read each step in the Treasury and Parliament documents themselves.

Date	Document	What it says
25 Nov 2025	Treasury media statement and discussion paper	20% on online GGR, on top of provincial tax; comments by 30 January 2026
15 Jan 2026	Treasury media statement	Deadline extended to 27 February 2026 at stakeholders’ request (the statement is dated “15 January 2025”; the file is in Treasury’s 2026 folder)
25 Feb 2026	2026 Budget Review, ch. 4	After a workshop with commenters, a proposal “will be included in draft legislation that will be made available for public comment later in the year”
27 Feb 2026	—	Comment period closes, two days after the Budget
21 Oct 2026	MTBPS speech	Submissions “generally recognised the need to address the growth of online gambling”; consultations continue on the design, “its linkages to the existing regulatory framework, and the implications for provinces and the currently regulated market”; “An announcement of the final design will be made in the February 2027 Budget.”

The MTBPS speech mentions no draft bill. 330 days after the paper was published, the tax has no legislative text, and the rate, the base and how it interacts with provincial taxes are all described by the Minister as open. Anyone modelling South African betting margins for 2027 should treat the 20% as a scenario.

What 20% adds to today’s provincial tax

Gambling, other than lotteries and sports pools, is a concurrent national and provincial competence under Schedule 4 Part A of the Constitution, and provinces tax it through their own gambling acts. The national tax would sit on the same GGR base as these provincial taxes; it would not replace them. So the starting point is what bookmakers pay now, and that differs by province.

Gauteng. Regulation 270A of the Gauteng Gambling Regulations (GN 570 of 1997, as substituted from 1 April 2018) charges betting tax and levies at 6.5% of a bookmaker’s gross betting revenue on events other than horse racing. Gross betting revenue is “hold less take out”, and a negative month can be carried forward for three months only (reg. 270A(4)). Regulation 274 adds a 1% Sports Development Fund levy on the same revenue. Returns and payment are weekly, by Wednesday (reg. 271), and late tax attracts a penalty of 10% a week, capped at twice the tax (reg. 272). Total: 7.5%.

Western Cape. The board’s published Gambling and Racing Regulations set the bookmaker’s tax at 3% “in respect of all winning bets” (reg. 70(2)) and a further 3% betting levy on the same winning bets (reg. 71(2)), with weekly returns by Thursday. The board’s own collection figures show what that comes to:

Western Cape sports betting, 2026	Turnover	GGR	Tax collected	Tax as % of GGR
January	R27.42bn	R1,434.1m	R93.4m	6.51%
February	R27.18bn	R1,147.0m	R74.2m	6.47%
March	R37.97bn	R1,718.7m	R111.6m	6.49%
April	R29.80bn	R1,479.0m	R96.1m	6.50%
May	R39.83bn	R1,995.0m	R129.5m	6.49%
June	R30.37bn	R1,450.9m	R94.1m	6.49%
July	R31.78bn	R1,439.7m	R93.6m	6.50%
January to July	R224.35bn	R10,664.4m	R692.4m	6.49%

Source: WCGRB tax collection statistics, “Updated July 2026”, read on 26 October 2026. Bookmakers in the province kept 4.75% of turnover as GGR. The tax ratio stays between 6.47% and 6.51% of GGR every month, which is what a charge set on revenue would produce; we could not find the text that links the winning-bets wording to that outcome, so treat the 6.49% as measured rather than as a statutory rate.

A 20% national tax on the same seven months of Western Cape GGR would have been R2.13bn, 3.08 times the R692.4m the province collected.

On R100m of GGR	Gauteng today	Gauteng with 20% national tax
Provincial tax and levy (7.5%)	R7.5m	R7.5m
National online gambling tax (20%)	—	R20.0m
Total	R7.5m	R27.5m
GGR left before costs	R92.5m	R72.5m

GGR left after gambling taxes falls by 21.6%. Treasury’s paper gives the combined rate as “between 26 per cent and 29 per cent”, which assumes provincial rates of 6% to 9%. On the two provinces we checked it is 27.5% (Gauteng) and about 26.5% (Western Cape). Corporate income tax comes after this, on profit.

The paper also notes where betting revenue sits: Western Cape produced 31.0% of national GGR in 2024/25 and Mpumalanga 29.9%, with Gauteng at 18.1%. We could not open the Mpumalanga regulator’s site, which sits behind a browser check, so its rate is not in this article.

Checking the R10bn estimate

The paper says that “at the current levels of gross gambling revenue, the 20 per cent tax on gambling would translate into over R10 billion in additional revenue”. Its own figures, taken from National Gambling Board statistics for 2024/25, do not quite get there on an online-only base:

• Betting GGR was R51.97bn, of which online betting was R44.46bn (85.5%).
• 20% of R44.46bn is R8.89bn.
• R10bn requires a base of R50bn. 20% of all betting GGR, retail included, is R10.39bn.

So either the estimate counts retail betting, which the proposal does not name, or it assumes interactive-gambling revenue that the official statistics do not record. The paper does not show the calculation. The gap matters to anyone who reads the R10bn as the size of the online market.

Taxing what the law still forbids

Section 11 of the National Gambling Act 2004 reads: “A person must not engage in or make available an interactive game except as authorised in terms of this Act or any other national law.” An interactive game is one played through an electronic agent over the internet, other than in licensed premises. The National Gambling Amendment Act 2008 would have created national interactive-gambling licences issued by the National Gambling Board and said a tax on interactive gambling would be imposed by separate legislation. It only comes into force on a date the President fixes by proclamation, and the Treasury paper confirms that “this has not yet happened”.

What is lawful online today is betting through a provincially licensed bookmaker. The paper quotes the National Gambling Board’s definition: a game played through a bookmaker licensed in South Africa “where the punter has no interaction with, or influence on, the outcome”. Online casino games are outside that.

The paper does not wait for the licensing question. Section 8 proposes that local online betting suppliers register with SARS and give it the information they already file with provincial boards, and that local players “involved in interactive gambling, which is still illegal … will also be subject to the proposed tax to the extent of the gross gambling revenue related to these activities”. Section 5 argues that a gambling tax can attach to whoever offers the service, “without limitation to licensed providers”. Paying the tax would not authorise the activity. Section 16 of the Act separately bars anyone from knowingly paying out winnings from unlawful gambling, and the paper records that authorised dealers decline foreign-currency purchases for offshore gambling.

The legislative route to licensing has not moved either. The private member’s Remote Gambling Bill (B11-2024) was introduced on 16 April 2024 and lapsed on 21 May 2024 under National Assembly rule 333(2), according to its PMG bill history. A new notice of intention to introduce a Remote Gambling Bill, by Roger Chance MP, was open for comment from 8 November to 7 December 2024. We found no tabled version of it on PMG on 26 October 2026.

The licence an online bookmaker needs now

Online sports betting runs on a provincial bookmaker licence. In the Western Cape the 2026 fee amendment (Provincial Notice 113, gazetted 31 March 2026) sets a R16,343 application fee and a R31,982 deposit for a bookmaker licence, then R3,278 a year in licence fees and R13,088 a year in investigation fees. Licensing, B-BBEE expectations and the other eight boards are covered in the South Africa gambling licence profile.

For comparison, Kenya charges its excise duty on deposits rather than on revenue, 5% on a wider base since 1 July 2026, on top of licence fees that reach KES 60m in year one (Kenya online gambling licence). Treasury’s paper cites Kenya’s experience with high stake-based duties as the risk of pushing players offshore. Licence fees in other markets are side by side in the all-jurisdiction cost comparison.

What we could not verify

• Other provinces’ rates. We checked Gauteng and Western Cape only. Mpumalanga, the second-largest province by GGR in 2024/25, was unreachable.
• Western Cape’s mechanism. The board’s regulations PDF is a 2016 consolidation that describes the tax by reference to winning bets; the measured 6.49% suggests a revenue-based outcome, and we did not find the amending text.
• The comment workshop. The Budget Review said Treasury would hold one; we found no public record of it.
• The R10bn base. The paper does not show how it was calculated.
• The final design. Rate, base, collection by SARS, and whether provincial tax is credited or simply added, are all due in the February 2027 Budget.