A quirk in British horseracing’s levy framework means dozens of smaller betting operators pay hundreds of pounds annually to verify profits they owe no levy on.
The Horserace Betting Levy Board collects a 10% charge on bookmaker profits from qualifying British horseracing bets, but only where those profits exceed £500,000.
Yet operators whose racing profits sit above £250,000 must still commission and fund an independent accountant’s report each year, regardless of whether any levy is actually due.
Those verification exercises cost affected bookmakers up to £2,000 apiece, a recurring overhead that the HBLB now acknowledges may be disproportionate for smaller businesses.
To address this, the Board ran a formal consultation between 25 August and 26 October, examining whether the profit threshold that triggers mandatory reporting should be raised.
The HBLB stated that “these reports provide necessary assurance for HBLB in its duty to collect the appropriate amount of Levy,” underlining why it has been reluctant to abandon them entirely.
The scale of the issue is modest but concentrated: the Board noted that “in 2025/26 there were 18 of these operators with a further 16 within a small band either side of this range.”
Altogether, that points to roughly three dozen bookmakers caught in or near the existing reporting band, each bearing recurring compliance costs tied to horseracing profits specifically.
Crucially, the figures involved relate solely to assessable profits from relevant betting activity, not total stakes accepted or a firm’s wider corporate revenues.
The Board has indicated it is considering narrowing the band of operators required to submit the full independent accountant’s report, which would reduce the number of businesses incurring those costs each cycle.
However, the HBLB has not specified what a revised threshold would look like, nor has it set any date for implementing changes following the consultation’s close.
That absence of detail leaves affected operators uncertain about their near-term compliance obligations, even as the Board signals a clear intention to ease the administrative load on the sector’s smaller participants.
