Finland Court Allows Bettor to Deduct Gambling Losses
Finland's Supreme Administrative Court (Korkein hallinto-oikeus, KHO) has ruled that a professional sports bettor's wagering activity amounted to income-generating work under Finnish tax law, granting him the right to deduct losing stakes from his taxable earned income.
The ruling, published as KHO:2026:79, overturns an earlier Helsinki Administrative Court decision and addresses tax treatment for the 2020 tax year.
According to the court's own published decision, the bettor, identified only as A, placed wagers both with bookmakers operating inside the European Economic Area and with operators based outside it. He built his betting activity around research, data analysis and identifying pricing errors in odds set by bookmakers specifically on Finnish football matches.
His weekly time commitment to betting varied from 50 to 100 hours during busier periods to 30–50 hours during quieter ones. In 2020 alone, A placed 2,145 separate bets with operators outside the EEA, staking a combined €365,606 and receiving total returns, or winnings, of €406,713 from those wagers.
Income Tax Act
The Finnish Tax Administration had previously taken the position that stakes placed on losing bets, and other costs tied to those losing bets, could not be set against the income generated by A's winning bets, since under the systematics of Finland's Income Tax Act such costs are only deductible insofar as they relate directly to taxable winning activity.
That earlier assessment added €112,369.48 to A's taxable earned income for 2020 and imposed a tax increase of €1,154.60.
The Court's Reasoning
The Supreme Administrative Court took a different view. It found that A's success in betting had to be regarded as based partly on chance, but also on his research and his knowledge of sports betting markets.
Taking into account the scale and systematic nature of the betting activity he carried out, the court held that he had pursued the activity with the stable intention of generating income within the meaning of Finland's Income Tax Act.
As a result, his betting activity qualified as income-generating activity, and he was entitled to deduct the amount of stakes paid on bets placed outside the EEA from his taxable earned income.
The court granted A leave to appeal and examined the case in full, quashing the decisions of the Administrative Court, the tax adjustment board and the Tax Administration's unfavourable adjustment of his 2020 taxation.
It referred the matter back to the tax adjustment board to assess whether other costs beyond the EEA-external betting stakes, and certain home-to-work travel costs already accepted in ordinary taxation, should also be deducted from his taxable income.
The court also ordered the Tax Administration to cover €5,820 of A's legal costs for the proceedings at the Supreme Administrative Court.
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What the Ruling Changes
The decision, grounded in Section 29(1) of Finland's Income Tax Act (Tuloverolaki), is likely to be closely read by other professional and semi-professional bettors in the country given how explicitly the court tied its finding to the scale, planning and research-driven nature of A's activity rather than treating betting income as inherently a matter of chance.
It also lands at a sensitive moment for Finnish gambling policy more broadly, with the country in the process of opening its market to licensed private operators ahead of a planned 2027 launch, a shift that has already drawn roughly 50 licence applications as new entrants position themselves for a market long dominated by state monopoly operator Veikkaus.
