The latest corporate tax data from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) shows that the big online wagering companies are very good at two things: winning bets and convincing the ATO that they make no profit.
By Anara Watson
Mon 26 Oct 2026 13.04 AEDT
Photo: AAP Image/Darren England
The latest corporate tax data from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) shows that the big online wagering companies are very good at two things: winning bets and convincing the ATO that they make no profit.
In 2024–25, Sportsbet, Tabcorp, bet365 and Ladbrokes won a whopping $5.5 billion from Australian punters.
Despite these big winnings, and the fact that most of them have little physical presence in Australia, they reported a profit of just $0.4 billion, resulting in tax payments of $0.09 billion.
The two biggest companies won over $2 billion each from Australian gamblers. Tabcorp won $2.3 billion, and Sportsbet (reporting to the ATO under the name Paddy Power Australia Pty Ltd) won $2.1 billion. Despite such big winnings, Tabcorp paid no company tax at all, and Sportsbet paid just $64 million.
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Perhaps more surprising still, bet365 (reporting to the ATO under the name Hillside Australia New Media) reported zero taxable income and zero tax payable in 2024-25. It is the ninth year in a row that bet365 paid no company tax, despite steadily increasing winnings now totalling $1.6 billion.
How do these companies win so much money and pay so little tax? Some have subsidiaries based in major tax havens such as Delaware, Malta, Gibraltar and Alderney in the English Channel. All of them spend a lot of money on advertising, as well as fees to racing industry bodies and other sports organisations. They do pay state-based gambling taxes, although much of that money is directly transferred to the racing industry, which “invests” in promoting wagering even further. See the Australia Institute’s August 2026 paper, Online wagering companies and company tax in Australia.
Measures to reduce gambling harm in Australia cannot be properly resourced from such small payments of company tax. This is part of the reason that the Australian Parliament’s 2023 inquiry into online gambling (commonly known as the Murphy Review) included a call for a levy to be placed on online gambling companies to fund a national harm reduction strategy, overseen by the Australian Government.
The Australian Government has failed to implement that recommendation. If you’d like to see gambling companies pay their fair share of tax to compensate for the harm they cause, you can sign this petition.
