Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court has ruled that sufficiently extensive and systematic sports betting can be treated as an activity pursued to earn income, a change that could materially alter how serious bettors are taxed.
News of the decision emerged via a LinkedIn post from Finnish lawyer Joonas Karhu. The practical consequence is that losing bets can now be deducted from taxable betting winnings. Travel costs between home and the place where the betting is done are also deductible.
The court stopped short of treating betting as a business under the Business Income Tax Act. It therefore sits in a middle category: income-producing activity, but not a trade. Professional poker had already been recognised as income-earning for tax purposes in Finland, and the decision extends similar logic to sports betting.
Why it matters
Under the current system, winnings from operators based inside the EEA are generally tax-free for Finnish players, while winnings from sites outside the EEA, such as Curaçao-licensed brands, are taxable income. The tax treatment of the losses has been the sticking point. In an unpublished 2025 decision, the same court held that a player’s losses could not be offset, so he was taxed on gross winnings despite a net loss overall.
This is the second time in roughly three months the court has stepped into gambling tax. In August, it ruled 3-2 that tax on non-EEA online slots must be calculated per session of play, rather than spin by spin, which allowed stakes on losing games within a session to be deducted for the first time. Tax lawyer Miika Härkönen of the Finnish Taxpayers’ Association said at the time that the key point was the court’s rejection of treating every game as a standalone event. He also warned that it remains unclear what counts as a single session, including how long a gap between bets would end one session and start another. The Tax Administration is expected to update its guidance accordingly.
Timing
The rulings land as Finland prepares to move from its monopoly to a licence-based system on 1 July 2027. Under the new framework, winnings from games made available in Finland by operators without a Finnish licence will be taxable, so the question of what players can deduct will matter more once the market opens. Affiliates are due to be banned from operating in Finland from the same date.