Italy Gaming Tax Category Tops €2.1bn Through April
Italy’s public gambling tax category, “taxes and duties on gaming activities,” reached €2.113bn between January and April 2026. The State General Accounting Department’s bulletin put the total at €2.094bn from current-year collection plus €19.3m from residual payments.
The largest line came from Prelievo Erariale Unico (PREU) on cash-prize amusement machines under Article 110, paragraph 6 of Italy’s Public Security Law. AWP and VLT machines generated €1.684bn, equal to almost 80% of the reported tax-and-duty category.
Machines Dominate the Tax-and-Duty Category
A further €225.7m came from skill games and prediction contests, through the 40% share of the single tax applied to those products. More than €13.5m of that line came from residual collection.
Additional lines in the category included gaming activity proceeds at €136.4m, the fixed state duty on prediction contests at €26.3m, and Other Category V revenue at €41.9m.
The same source separately lists other gaming-related revenue lines. Concession fees tied to the machine network and national totalisator number games reached €168.4m, while payments from concessionaires that operate Article 110, paragraph 6 TULPS machines totalled about €636,000.
By comparison, Lotto remained one of the largest additional revenue sources. Lotto proceeds stood at €360.2m, and the 6% withholding tax on Lotto and other game winnings produced €218.8m. The source treats those two lines as a combined contribution of about €579m, though the withholding figure spans winnings from other games too. For Bingo, the figure came in at €56.1m, with residual payments included.
💡TGJ Take
Italy’s bulletin shows why AWP and VLT policy carries fiscal weight beyond the operator channel. PREU alone accounts for nearly 80% of the €2.113bn tax-and-duty category, so any change to the machine model would affect state income as well as concessionaire margins. Lotto and Bingo add important secondary revenue, but they do not change the core picture: Italy’s gambling tax structure still depends heavily on machine-based collection. For suppliers and concessionaires, that makes the AWP/VLT segment the vertical most exposed to both fiscal pressure and regulatory attention.
