Finland Betting Tax Ruling Lets Pros Deduct Losing Bets

A five-year fight over €365,606 in losing wagers has ended in Helsinki, and the outcome rewrites the betting tax rules Finland applies at the top end of its market. The Supreme Administrative Court ruled on October 1 that a professional bettor can deduct the stakes he lost from the winnings he declared. That decision, recorded as precedent KHO:2026:79, overturned the Tax Administration and every lower body that had sided with it.

Antti Koivula placed 2,145 bets during 2020 with operators based outside the European Economic Area. He staked €365,606 across the year and collected €406,713 back, leaving him roughly €41,100 ahead. Finland’s tax officials looked at the same betting record and handed him a bill built on a figure more than twice that profit.

How Finland’s Betting Tax Math Broke Down

The Tax Administration assessed every wager on its own. Stakes attached to winning bets counted as deductible, while each losing stake disappeared from the calculation altogether. That method added more than €112,000 to Koivula’s taxable income and came with a further tax increase of €1,154.60.

Anyone who bets in volume will spot the flaw immediately. A punter turning over hundreds of thousands of euros a year loses far more individual bets than he wins. Strip those losses out and the betting tax Finland charges attaches to a profit that never existed. Koivula said the pressure pushed him to look into taking out a loan, and with three small children at home the money mattered.

The Court Called It Work, Not Luck

The judges found that his betting qualified as income-generating activity under Finland’s Income Tax Act. His results rested partly on chance, the court accepted, but also on sustained research, information gathering and a working knowledge of how bookmakers price their markets. Scale carried weight in the reasoning too.

Koivula has supported himself and his family through betting since 2010, concentrating on Finnish football and hunting for pricing gaps between operators. Court documents put his working week at somewhere between 30 and 100 hours depending on the season. On that basis the full €365,606 in stakes became deductible, the tax increase vanished, and the court ordered the Tax Administration to cover his legal costs.

Where the Ruling Stops Short

One firm line runs through the judgment. The court recognised the betting as a structured effort to earn income, yet it declined to classify that effort as business activity under the Business Income Tax Act. Joonas Karhu, a lawyer at Huhtikuu, set out the practical result: losing stakes come off taxable winnings, and travel between home and workplace counts as a deductible expense. Finland’s tax code now treats serious betting as earned income without calling it a company.

No thresholds arrived with the decision either. The court named no minimum number of bets, no income floor and no required hours. Koivula pointed out that the ruling places him inside the criteria without saying where the boundary sits. An income-generating activity, he added, does not have to be anyone’s main source of income for the overall picture to count.

Why the Timing Matters Before 2027

The dispute only arose because of where Koivula placed his money. Finnish law exempts winnings from Finland and other qualifying EEA jurisdictions while taxing anything won beyond that zone, which dragged his offshore betting into the net. That geographic split has very little life left in it.

On July 1, 2027, the country opens a licensed gambling market, and the betting tax line in Finland will then follow licensing status instead of borders. The question the court has just answered therefore stops being a niche concern for offshore specialists. It becomes the default framework for anyone in the country earning serious money from wagering.

Tax lawyer Miika Härkönen noted that Finnish practice has long allowed poker players engaged in income-generating activity to deduct their losses. Betting now sits much closer to that treatment. Operators preparing for next summer gain from that shift as well. A betting tax charged on turnover rather than profit would have made an awkward pitch to the high-volume players Finland’s new licensees want most.

What Happens Next

Finland’s Tax Administration has guidance to rewrite, because its current position treats losing stakes on non-EEA bets as non-deductible. Bettors assessed under that old interpretation may be able to seek rectification, provided they act within the applicable deadlines. How far down the volume scale that opportunity reaches is still anyone’s guess, since the absence of thresholds cuts in both directions.

Koivula marked the result on LinkedIn with a line about the tax bear going down. His own assessment drove the case, yet the precedent reaches a long way past it. Finland now applies its betting tax to what a player actually earns rather than to everything that passes through his account. How fast the Tax Administration moves its guidance into line is the next thing worth watching.