Tunisia Proposes a 60 Per Cent Games Tax: What South African Players Should Know
Tunisia's draft 2027 Finance Bill proposes raising the tax on covered games and competitions from 40 to 60 per cent of the participation price. It is not law, its scope is unclear, and it changes nothing for South African players.
Tunisia is not a market South African players use, so the proposal changes nothing at home. It is useful as a comparison: African governments are chasing gambling revenue while regulators debate offshore play. South African law is unchanged, and offshore casinos that accept South African players are not licensed here.
What Tunisia proposed on its games and competitions tax
Tunisia's government wants to raise the tax on covered games and competitions from 40 per cent to 60 per cent of the participation price. The proposal sits in the draft Finance Bill for 2027, reported by Focus Gaming News on 22 October 2026, and it would add 20 percentage points to the current rate. Anyone following the Tunisia games tax 60 per cent story should keep one word in mind: proposed. The bill has not been passed and the existing rules stay in force until Parliament says otherwise.
The change appears in Article 24, paragraph 3 of the draft. According to SiGMA News, which reported it on 27 October 2026, the extra revenue is meant to strengthen the financing of social security. Focus Gaming News adds that the draft's explanatory section describes the money as going to the account used to diversify social security funding. So this is a fiscal measure written by the finance side of government, not a gambling licensing reform written by a gaming regulator.
The timeline is short and easy to follow. Tunisia submitted the draft 2027 Finance Bill to Parliament on 14 October 2026, and it was referred to the Finance and Budget Committee on 16 October. That committee stage is where the wording of Article 24 will be tested. iGamingToday also covered the story on 26 October, crediting iGamingAfrika for the original report.
We should be plain about what this post is. It is a news explainer with our own reading added, and we label that reading as ours wherever it appears. The facts come from the three outlets linked in the text and listed at the end. We have not read the draft bill itself, because we could not fetch the Tunisian parliamentary text this session, so every figure below is as reported by those outlets.
How the 40 per cent rate came about
The 60 per cent figure only makes sense next to the rate it would replace. Focus Gaming News reports that the existing 40 per cent charge was established by Article 17 of Law No. 48 of 2024, which is Tunisia's Finance Law for 2025, dated 9 December 2024. iGamingToday gives the same article and law number.
A year later, Law No. 17 of 2025, the Finance Law for 2026 dated 12 December 2025, provided for the tax to apply to games and competitions accessed through communication technologies, according to both Focus Gaming News and SiGMA News. That wording matters. It ties the tax to how a person enters, not to what kind of game they enter.
Put the two laws side by side and a pattern shows. Tunisia first created a participation tax in late 2024, then widened the route of entry in late 2025, and now proposes a steep rate rise for 2027. Two Finance Laws and now a draft third have touched the same charge. In our reading, that suggests the Finance Ministry sees this tax as a convenient source of social security money rather than a one-off measure, though none of the outlets say so directly and we cannot confirm the intent.
Tax on the participation price is also a different animal from tax on gross gaming revenue. A participation tax is charged on what the entrant pays to take part. A gaming revenue tax is charged on what the operator keeps after paying winners. The reports describe the Tunisian charge as a percentage of the participation price, so the first description fits.
Which games does the Tunisian tax actually cover?
This is the question every outlet raises and none can fully answer. The draft's explanatory notes refer to games and competitions entered directly by telephone or through SMS. Yet Focus Gaming News says the available documentation does not clearly establish the full scope of the proposed tax, or whether it applies to every form of online gambling and sports betting.
SiGMA News goes further and warns that the proposal should not be read as a blanket tax increase across Tunisia's online gambling market. It says the wording eventually adopted will decide which games and competitions fall inside the provision, and whether the tax reaches extra forms of participation through digital communications.
That uncertainty has practical consequences. Consider the kinds of products that might sit inside or outside the line:
- Competitions entered by premium SMS or a phone call, which the explanatory notes name.
- Online casino games and sports bets placed through a website or app, which the reports say are not clearly covered.
- State-run products such as sports betting and horse race betting, which sit under their own arrangements.
We would not try to sort products into those buckets with confidence. The sources do not let us, and guessing would be exactly the kind of invented detail this site avoids. What can be said is that headlines saying Tunisia is taxing gaming at 60 per cent are broader than the evidence supports. The accurate version is narrower: a tax on covered games and competitions, scope still unsettled.
The money question: social security, a deficit and no forecast
Governments rarely raise a tax in isolation, and Focus Gaming News places this one inside the wider 2027 budget. It cites an article by African Manager titled "2027 Budget: Small taxes and a big loan". According to that reporting, the 2027 Finance Bill provides for state expenditure of TND68.895 billion, about US$23.1 billion, and a projected budget deficit of TND14.615 billion, about US$4.9 billion. The same coverage points to other proposed levies, including higher taxes on alcoholic drinks and foreign travel.
Seen against that backdrop, the games tax looks like one of several smaller revenue measures. A deficit of that size, set against that spending, helps explain why a ministry would look at a charge that can be raised with a single line in a finance bill.
There is one notable gap. Both SiGMA News and Focus Gaming News point out that the government has not published an estimate of the extra money the higher rate should raise. Without a forecast, nobody outside the ministry can say whether the increase is meant to be a large contributor or a token one. It also means we cannot tell you how many dinars the change might move, and we will not invent a figure.
Our reading: the missing estimate makes the proposal harder to scrutinise. Parliamentarians, operators and consumer groups all lack the number they would need to judge whether 60 per cent is proportionate. That is a fair question for the Finance and Budget Committee to put to the government.
Tunisia's wider gambling law is still stuck in 1974
The tax proposal lands in a legal environment that has barely moved for decades. iGamingToday reports that Tunisia's gambling laws are still based on Decree-Law 74-20 of October 1974. At present the state-owned operator Promosport is the only legal channel for sports betting, while pari-mutuel horse race betting is handled by the Agence Tunisienne de Solidarité.
The same report describes two attempts to modernise the rules, neither of which has produced a licensing system for online gambling. The first was Bill 2026/009, submitted by 23 deputies on 20 January and sent to the General Legislation Committee later that month. Rather than opening the market, it would ban online gambling altogether and require internet providers and payment companies to block access. Offenders could face fines and prison terms of one to five years, with tougher penalties for repeat offences, minors or suspected money laundering. After a discussion on 3 February, the committee reportedly has not returned to it.
The second route is government drafting. Sports Minister Sadok Mourali said in November 2024 that a draft gambling and sports betting bill had been circulated to 26 public bodies, including the central bank, the Competition Council and the financial intelligence authority. A year later he said the text had been fully revised to better match international standards on betting manipulation and anti-money laundering. According to iGamingToday, the draft still has not been published.
Put those threads together and you get a strange picture. Parliament has one bill that would prohibit online gambling, the government has an unpublished bill, and the Finance Ministry is proposing to raise a tax on certain games and competitions. Those three tracks are not obviously aligned. In our reading, the tax proposal does not signal that Tunisia is legalising online gambling, and it does not signal a ban either. It is a revenue line moving through a separate process.
Promosport's tender and what it says about the state's plans
One more detail from the iGamingToday report shows where the state operator is heading. Promosport, which operates under the Ministry of Youth and Sports, launched a tender earlier in October for a new multichannel platform covering games of chance and sports betting. Bids were due by 5 November through Tunisia's online procurement system, TUNEPS, according to Focus Gaming News. The tender carries reference number 20260901807-TUNEPS and covers games, lottery products, gambling services and betting services.
A state operator shopping for a multichannel platform tells us the government expects to keep offering betting and games through digital channels while it debates the legal framework. It does not tell us whether private operators will ever be licensed. The tender documents are the primary source here, and we have not seen them, so we keep to what the news reports state.
For readers trying to follow the policy direction, the practical reading is simple. The state is modernising its own product, taxing certain participation-based games harder, and leaving the question of open licensing unanswered. Anyone expecting a Tunisian online casino licensing regime from this news would be reading something into it that is not there.
What this means for South African players
Tunisia is not a market South African players use, so nothing in this proposal changes what you can do from home. The reason it is worth reading is comparative. African governments are looking at gambling as a source of public money at the same moment that regulators debate how to control offshore and unlicensed play. Tunisia's version is a participation tax aimed at a narrow set of games, written into a finance bill. South Africa's debate runs through the National Gambling Act and tax proposals, which we have covered in our posts on the national online gambling tax and the tax and advertising limits debate.
The legal position at home stays the same. No South African operator currently holds a licence for remote casino games under the National Gambling Act, and the market is served by offshore-licensed sites that accept South African players. Accepting players is not the same as being licensed here. Our South Africa gambling law page explains the distinction, and it applies whether or not a foreign government changes its tax rates.
There is also a lesson about how tax and regulation differ. A tax on participation can be raised quickly through a budget law, as Tunisia's successive Finance Laws show. A licensing regime takes drafting, consultation and enforcement. Where a country taxes before it licenses, the tax rate says little about player protection. If you play at an offshore site, tools and limits matter more than any rate on the operator's books, so read our responsible gambling page and set deposit limits before you play.
Gambling is entertainment with real risk. Never stake money you need for rent, school fees or food, and if play stops being fun, support is listed on that page.
What to watch next
The next real signal will come from the Finance and Budget Committee. The things to look for are listed below.
- Whether the committee changes the wording of Article 24, paragraph 3, and narrows or widens the games it covers.
- Whether the government publishes a revenue estimate for the increase.
- Whether the 60 per cent rate survives the vote on the 2027 Finance Bill.
- Whether Promosport awards its platform tender after the 5 November deadline.
- Whether the government's own gambling and sports betting bill is finally published.
None of these is guaranteed to move quickly. Finance bills in many countries are amended heavily between submission and adoption, and rates in a draft often change. We will update this explainer if the reporting changes, and we will mark any revision with a new date rather than quietly rewriting it.
Treat the current 60 per cent figure as a proposal with an open scope question. It is a useful marker of how African finance ministries think about gambling revenue, but it is not yet law, and it is not clearly a tax on the whole online gambling market.