Finnish professional bettor wins major gambling tax case
A Finnish professional sports bettor has won a major tax case that establishes losing bets can be deducted when gambling is conducted systematically to generate income.
Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court ruled in favour of gambling lawyer and former professional bettor Antti Koivula in a dispute over his 2020 betting activity. The case had been running for more than five years.
Koivula placed 2,145 bets during 2020 with gambling operators outside the European Economic Area, staking €365,606 and receiving €406,713 in returns, with his profit coming in at just over €41,000.
Finland’s Tax Administration had taken a very different approach, allowing Koivula to deduct stakes associated with winning bets but refusing deductions for money staked on losing wagers.
That resulted in more than €112,000 being added to his earned income, despite his actual betting profit being considerably lower.
Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court has now rejected that treatment.
The court found Koivula’s betting was sufficiently systematic, extensive and focused on generating income to qualify as income-producing activity under Finland’s Income Tax Act.
That meant the full cost of placing the taxable bets — including stakes lost on unsuccessful wagers — could be deducted when calculating his taxable income.
The scale of Koivula’s betting was central to the decision.
He had supported himself and his family through betting for around a decade and concentrated heavily on Finnish football, researching matches and betting markets to identify odds he believed betting sites had incorrectly priced.
During particularly busy periods, he spent 50 to 100 hours per week on betting-related work. Even during quieter periods, that figure was generally between 30 and 50 hours.
His average annual betting turnover since 2014 had been approximately €653,000, demonstrating that the activity went considerably further than recreational gambling.
The court nevertheless stopped short of classifying Koivula’s betting as a business under Finland’s Business Income Tax Act. Instead, it found the activity met the separate threshold for systematic income generation under income-tax legislation.
Koivula celebrated the ruling after it was handed down.
“The tax bear is down! I won 100-0 in the Supreme Administrative Court. Every single substantive issue,” he said.
“The case concerned my personal income taxation and determined the tax treatment of professional bettors in Finland — both now and going forward.”
The ruling does not mean ordinary Finnish gamblers can begin deducting all losing bets from their taxes.
The court considered the overall nature of Koivula’s activity, including its scale, regularity, research, expertise and clear intention to produce income. Koivula said there is no specific minimum number of bets, working hours or turnover that automatically qualifies someone for the same treatment.
“This makes professional gambling possible going forward,” Koivula told Finnish gambling publication Nettipokeri following the decision.
The decision could become particularly important when Finland’s gambling market changes in July 2027, when the country is due to move away from much of the Veikkaus monopoly and introduce a competitive licensing system for online betting and casino gambling.
Koivula believes the ruling could also apply to professional betting with operators outside Finland’s future licensing system where winnings are taxable, although that is his interpretation of the decision rather than something specifically decided by the court.
For professional bettors, however, the immediate principle established by the case is significant: where betting qualifies as genuine income-producing activity, Finnish tax authorities cannot simply count the winning wagers while ignoring the cost of the bets that lost.
