The President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, has vetoed an increase in the tax on betting winnings from 10% to 15%, in a rare taxation win for European gaming.

Nawrocki’s decision comes amid a wider review of Poland’s gambling regulations, legislative frameworks, and taxation rates, coinciding with a general taxation trend seen across Europe.

The Polish government has been eyeing up potential revenue streams, and like other EU nations targeting the gambling sector as a lucrative source of tax.

In October, the Sejm (upper house of the Polish legislature) began preparing amendments to the Personal Income Tax Act to increase the tax on winnings from betting, gaming, lotteries and prize draws.

However, it has been revealed to SBC News that President Nawrock, whose right-wing law and justice party tends to favour state control over the economy, has decided to buck his own trend and maintain the winnings tax rate at 10%.

“The veto prevents the adoption of a higher fiscal burden that had raised concerns among licensed operators and industry stakeholders,” said Marek Plota, Managing Partner at RM Legal, writing on LinkedIn.

“Keeping the current tax level helps maintain the attractiveness of licensed products and reduces the risk of players shifting to the grey market.”

According to Dr Justyna Grusza-Głębicka, an Attorney at Law and specialist in Polish iGaming law, President Nawrocki explained that he has a duty to approve laws that serve Polish citizens and reject ones that harm them.

Poland’s bookmakers get some breathing room

Now that the bill has been rejected, it will return to the Sejm. However, Nawrocki’s rejection can be overridden if three-fifths of Sejm members vote to do so in the presence of at least half of the upper house’s 460 deputies – so an increased winnings tax could still be on the table.

For now though, Poland’s betting and gaming space can celebrate this as a win. The main fear around an increase in winning taxes was, as RM Legal’s Plota observed, the possibility that customers would try to avoid winning taxes altogether by moving to the unregulated market.

With Polish betting being a highly competitive space, with market leader STS Holdings dominating the sector while various other domestic and international firms scrap it out for market share, the prospect of a heavier tax on consumers was daunting.

Nawrocki’s veto bucks a trend seen across Europe whereby gaming taxes have been sharply increased, though for the most part governments have focused on the companies rather than the consumer – the UK, Netherlands and France being some of the more notable examples.

For Polish licences, attention turns to 2026 and whether the Nawrocki administration will review Poland’s prohibitive online casino laws, which reserve exclusive operating rights for the state-owned gambling group Totalizator Sportowy.