Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party call it the “BBB Tax” — for Bets, Banks and Billionaires.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leftist party has an insatiable need for revenues to shore up the country’s fiscal deficit. Now, despite a recent set-back, they’re again targeting iGaming with a plan to double the tax on Gross Gaming Revenues (GGR) of the nation’s newly-regulated betting houses.
The party’s chief whip in the lower chamber, Lindberg Farias, has introduced a bill that would raise the tax on GGR from the current 12 percent to 24 percent.
He did so the very day after the government’s initial attempt to squeeze more revenue from the tax system missed a deadline and expired in Congress.
That measure had included raising the GGR tax on bookmakers from 12 percent to 18 percent. But that proposal was dropped from the bill because it faced solid resistance among legislators – which perhaps indicates that the move to double GGR tax will not fare any better this time around.
Harmful
To soften the latest proposal to double the tax on betting houses, Lindberg’s bill aims to allocate half of the tax collected to public health programs, especially for the treatment and prevention of gambling addiction, which has increased significantly in Brazil since online sports betting was allowed.
“This proposed law increases Brazilian taxation on gambling to a level higher than the average for other activities, which is justified by the fact that gambling is harmful to health and the family economy,” asserted Lindberg.
“However, it is important to note that, even with the proposed increase, the Brazilian tax rate will still be lower than that of other countries, such as France and Germany,” he stressed.
But Brazil’s National Gaming and Lottery Association (ANJL) has lambasted the proposal, calling it “technically flawed” in a statement that questioned Lindbergh for linking gambling and public health.
Fictitious
“Doubling the tax rate will boost illegal gaming, compromise tax collection and undermine the sustainability of licensed operators, especially at the moment when the betting market is consolidating under the new regulatory framework,” the ANJL said.
And the association questioned as “fictitious” that there are two million “compulsive gamblers” in Brazil, as cited by Lindberg in his bill.
The national health service (SUS) has reported 3,892 cases of compulsive gambling in the country between 2022 and September 2025, the ANJL told iGF.
There is widespread support in Brazil’s Congress for increasing the tax on betting houses.
Uninformed
Senator Cleiton Gontijo de Azevedo of the Republicans Party, better known as Cleitinho, posted a video on social media highlighting the need for the BBB Tax, which targets billionaires, banking institutions, and online gambling companies.
The congressman argues that it will be necessary to compensate for the loss of federal tax revenue by increasing taxes on the gambling sector.
Gambling companies should not “exist”, argued the senator. “But since they do, taxation should be higher than 50 percent.”
And the proposed gambling tax hike has other powerful legislative proponents.
Speaking to the Senate Economic Affairs Committee this week, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, warned: “Taxing the BBBs [billionaires, banks and bets] is only unfair in the minds of people who are uninformed about what is happening in Brazil.”
