Betfred's £30m Dividend Puts Betting Tax Row in Focus
The Done family paid itself a £30m interim dividend from Betfred in the year it warned that a tax rise on betting machines could force widespread shop closures and job losses.
The payment is detailed in accounts for the year to the end of March 2026. Most of it went to trusts that benefit the family. It brings total payouts to shareholders to more than £105m since 2022, according to The Guardian. The money is understood to have been put back into other Done family businesses, including their property empire.
Chancellor John Healey is understood to be considering plans to double machine games duty, the tax bookmakers pay on profits from gaming machines, in the coming budget. The rate would rise from 20% to 40% under the proposals under review. The Social Market Foundation has estimated that change could raise up to £460m for the Treasury.
Fred Done joined other industry leaders in signing a letter to Healey warning of sharp contraction if the duty rises. The letter said the toll could reach 1,470 betting shop closures, 34 casino closures and 15,900 job losses. The signatories argue the rise would hurt high-street shops and licensed casinos that depend on machine income to stay open.
Betfred's accounts show the size of the business involved. The company took a record £996m from British gamblers in the year to the end of March 2026 and reported a pre-tax profit of £64m. Accounts for Betfred Group Holdings Limited show £54m of the family's tax contribution last year came from machine games duty. Done told the Financial Times his family paid £400m in taxes last year. The family is collectively worth about £3bn and is ranked as Britain's biggest taxpayers by the Sunday Times Tax List.
Done opened his first bookmaker in 1967. Since 2019, Betfred has warned it could close nearly 1,000 shops in response to higher taxes or tighter rules, including the £2 limit on fixed-odds betting terminals, the fast-play machines in shops. Its estate has fallen from about 1,620 shops to 1,293 shops over that period, a drop of nearly 330.
The broader context here is a familiar calculation in British gambling policy. The Treasury sees machines as an easy place to collect tax. Income is concentrated, easy to audit and hard to move offshore. Operators see that same income as the profit margin that keeps weaker shops open. Both views can hold at once. The policy question is how sensitive that margin is, and where closures would actually happen.
Looking at what this means for the budget debate, the timing of the dividend will affect the politics more than the economics. A £30m payout next to a £64m pre-tax profit does not alone answer whether a tax rise is affordable, and reinvestment in domestic businesses makes any simple story about money leaving the company harder to sustain. Still, it will bring closer scrutiny of industry warnings. Healey must weigh a potential revenue gain of up to £460m against a large but disputed cost to jobs and high streets, with a history of earlier closure warnings and a net fall of around 330 shops since 2019 shaping how seriously officials take the latest figures.
