Gambling Winnings Tax in Asia

Who taxes what: a quick map

Asia splits into two broad groups when it comes to taxing what you win.

In the first group, the taxman comes to the player:

In the second group, the government taxes the operator, not you. Singapore does not tax betting or lottery winnings at all, and Macau's famous casino tax, 35% of gaming revenue plus about 5% more for cultural, tourism and urban development projects, falls on the casino companies, not on the people playing⁵. If you win at a baccarat table in Macau or on Toto in Singapore, no one deducts anything from your payout.

The other big variable is who does the paperwork. In most of Asia, tax is withheld at source: the lottery company, the betting operator or the app deducts the tax and hands it over for you. In Japan, by contrast, racing payouts are not withheld at the window, so if your winnings are large enough you must file a return yourself.

If you live in Asia but hold another passport, there is a third layer: your home country may also want to tax the same winnings. We cover that at the end.

China: 20% on lottery winnings, with a CNY 10,000 exemption per single win

China's welfare lottery and sports lottery are the country's legal mass-market gambling products, and winnings from them are taxed as "incidental income" under the Individual Income Tax Law, at a flat 20% rate on the full amount of each winning⁶.

The crucial detail is the exemption: a single winning of CNY 10,000 or less is temporarily exempt from individual income tax, a preferential policy that has been in place since the 1990s and was reaffirmed in 2024⁷. If your single win is CNY 10,001 or more, the whole amount is taxed at 20%, not just the part above 10,000. There is no taper: cross the line by one yuan and the full prize is taxable.

A worked example: you hit a CNY 9,800 prize on a sports lottery ticket. You keep all of it. Your friend wins CNY 100,000 on an instant scratch card. The lottery institution withholds CNY 20,000, which is 20% of the full prize, and handles the tax filing on your friend's behalf⁸. Your friend receives CNY 80,000 and does not need to visit a tax office.

Note that this exemption applies to the welfare and sports lotteries. The 2024 four-department announcement confirmed the exemption for both, and confirmed that winnings above the line are taxed in full⁶.

What counts as one win in China, and when you must register

The CNY 10,000 line applies per single winning, so what counts as "one win" matters a lot.

For computer lottery games, all prizes won by the same person in the same draw of the same game count as one single winning income⁹. So if you hold five tickets on the same draw and three of them pay out, those payouts are added together and tested against the CNY 10,000 line as one amount. For instant scratch cards, the prize of one ticket counts as one single win. And for the Hainan video electronic instant game, the prize of one game session counts as one winning.

There is also a registration rule that surprises first-time winners. For computer lottery payouts over CNY 3,000, the redemption outlet must register the winner's real-name identity and redemption information, and winners are expected to cooperate⁸. This applies even to tax-exempt wins: lottery institutions handle tax-exempt filing for individuals with computer lottery single winnings over CNY 3,000 up to CNY 10,000, and full tax filing for single winnings over CNY 10,000⁷. Bring your ID when you claim. Also keep your ticket safe: the winning ticket is the sole proof for claiming a prize, and tickets damaged beyond recognition cannot be redeemed.

Japan: temporary income and the half-tax rule for racing payouts

Japan treats payouts from public racing, meaning horse racing, keirin, auto racing and boat racing, as "temporary income" in principle². This is a much gentler system than China's flat 20%, because of how temporary income is calculated and taxed.

The calculation works in three steps. Start with your gross payout for the year. Subtract the purchase cost of the winning tickets. Then subtract a special deduction of up to JPY 500,000. What is left is your temporary income amount².

Then comes the half-tax rule: only half of that amount is added to your other income, such as salary, when your total income is computed, and tax is calculated on that¹⁰. The effect is that a modest racing winner can owe surprisingly little, and often nothing at all.

One important limit: you can deduct the cost of the winning tickets, but the cost of losing tickets cannot be deducted². If you bet JPY 20,000 across a race meeting and one JPY 1,000 ticket pays JPY 600,000, you deduct JPY 1,000, not JPY 20,000.

The tax authority asks winners to keep a note of three things for each payout: the race date, venue and race number; the amount received; and the amount wagered on that winning ticket². If you collect payouts at the window, keep your tickets and a simple log.

A note on pachinko and slot parlors: prizes from slot machines and similar devices are treated as "other income" under Japan's Income Tax Act, a separate category from temporary income. And the Japan Racing Association itself notes that there are cases where betting ticket winnings are subject to income tax and comprehensive taxation¹¹. For a deeper look at racing-specific rules, see our page on horse racing winnings tax.

Japan: when no tax return is required

The good news for most casual punters: no final tax return is required if the total amount of your temporary income for the year does not exceed JPY 500,000¹². Since the JPY 500,000 special deduction comes off before that test, in practice a salary earner whose racing payouts net out below the deduction owes nothing and files nothing.

For people with salary income, the threshold is even higher: no return is required if total temporary income does not exceed JPY 900,000, because tax is computed on half of the balance after the JPY 500,000 deduction, and the return requirement for salary earners only kicks in when other income exceeds JPY 200,000¹².

Separately, some Japanese gambling products are simply exempt. Japanese law imposes no income tax at all on payouts from sports promotion voting, the toto soccer lottery among them¹³. So a toto win is tax-free at the point of payout, while a big win on the JRA's horse racing pools may require a return.

For scale, it helps to know what a genuinely large Japanese lottery win costs in tax. On a JPY 100 million lottery prize, income tax at progressive rates comes to about JPY 16.9 million and resident tax about JPY 4.93 million, leaving roughly JPY 78.17 million after tax, an effective rate of about 78.2% received¹⁴. That is the lottery, not racing, but it shows how steep progressive rates become at the top. If you win a large sports lottery prize paid by bank transfer, note that a transfer fee of JPY 50 at Japan Post Bank or JPY 154 at other banks is deducted from the winnings for payouts over JPY 500,000¹⁵.

India: 30% TDS on net winnings from real money gaming apps

India takes a different approach from the countries above: instead of taxing each win, it taxes your net winnings across a whole account on a real money gaming app, at 30%, deducted at source as TDS (tax deducted at source).

Under the Finance Act 2023 framework, all real money gaming apps must deduct 30% tax on your net winnings either at the time you withdraw or on March 31, the end of the financial year³. Net winnings means your withdrawals minus your deposits. The app does the math, deducts the tax, and pays it to the income tax department against your PAN.

A simple example from the operators' own guidance: you deposit INR 2,000 and later withdraw INR 3,000. Your net winnings are INR 1,000, so 30% tax of INR 300 is deducted and you receive INR 2,700³. If you withdraw exactly what you deposited, net winnings are zero and no tax is deducted.

India: how TDS is deducted, reset each April, and when refunds apply

The TDS system runs on the financial year, April 1 to March 31, and resets each April 1. From April 1, 2025, all TDS calculations were reset: the balance in your account on March 31, 2025 was treated as a withdrawal and taxed, and the remainder carried forward into the new year³.

Tax already deducted is not deducted twice. If tax was deducted on positive net winnings when you withdrew during the year, the same net winnings are not taxed again on March 31³. You can check your running tax calculation on the app's withdrawal page.

Three scenarios from the operators' examples show how the year-end settlement works:

• You withdrew INR 5,000 in total and deposited INR 6,000 in total. Net winnings are minus INR 1,000, so no tax is deducted and you receive your INR 2,000 withdrawal in full³.
• You withdrew INR 9,000 and deposited INR 8,000, but INR 300 of tax was already deducted on an earlier withdrawal. Net winnings are INR 1,000, tax of INR 300 was already paid, so no further tax is taken³.
• At year end your net winnings are INR 500, so the total tax is 30% of that, INR 150. INR 100 was already deducted during the year, so the remaining INR 50 is deducted from your closing balance of INR 1,000, leaving INR 950 carried into the new financial year³.

If your net winnings are negative at the end of the financial year, you may be eligible for a refund of tax already deducted, which you claim when filing your tax return³. The app cannot refund excess tax directly to you; the money has already gone to the income tax department against your name, so the refund comes through the return. Our page on tax refunds on winnings covers this process in detail.

Vietnam: 10% tax on lottery prizes above the threshold

Vietnam taxes prize winnings under its personal income tax law, and the list of taxable winnings is broad: lottery winnings, promotion prizes, winnings from legally permitted betting, casino winnings, and prizes from games and contests organized by economic organizations and others¹⁶.

The rate is 10%, applied under the "full schedule" method, and only the part of the prize above the threshold is taxed⁴. Under Circular 111/2013, the taxable income is the prize value exceeding VND 10,000,000 per winning, regardless of how many times the prize money is received⁴. So on a VND 50,000,000 Vietlott prize, the taxable portion is VND 40,000,000 and the tax is VND 4,000,000.

Important change: from July 1, 2026, the new Personal Income Tax Law raises the threshold to VND 20,000,000, so only lottery winnings above that amount are taxable, still at 10%¹⁷. On the same VND 50,000,000 prize, the taxable portion becomes VND 30,000,000 and the tax VND 3,000,000.

Vietnam: who pays and how it is calculated

You do not handle Vietnamese lottery tax yourself. The lottery company and its sales outlets withhold the tax and file the personal income tax return on the winner's behalf, so the prize you receive is already net⁴. Winners must fully fulfill their tax obligations as provided by tax law, but in practice the redemption desk does the work.

The formula is simple: personal income tax payable equals taxable income times the 10% rate, where taxable income is the prize value above the threshold⁴. The same calculation applies to both resident and non-resident individuals, so a visitor winning a Vietlott prize is taxed the same way as a resident⁴.

For casino players, Vietnam's rules allow foreigners and overseas Vietnamese holding foreign passports to receive winnings and transfer or carry winnings abroad in foreign currency under Vietnamese foreign exchange rules¹⁸. See our page on taking winnings home for the cash and transfer side.

South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines: withholding at the counter

These three countries all use withholding at the point of payout, so the tax comes off before you see the money.

South Korea. Sports Toto products, soccer, basketball and baseball pools, follow a two-part test. No tax is imposed if the winning odds are 100x or less and the refund is KRW 2,000,000 or less, or if the refund is KRW 100,000 or less regardless of the odds¹⁹. The same rule appears across the Toto game family, including the soccer, baseball and basketball match games. When the payout rate is 100x or more, or the refund per individual bet is KRW 2,000,000 or more, other income tax of 20% plus resident tax of 10% of that amount is withheld before the refund is paid²⁰. Boat racing refunds follow the same bands: a refund of KRW 100,000 or less per bet is untaxed whatever the payout rate, and refunds up to KRW 2,000,000 escape tax where the payout rate does not exceed 100x; amounts above those bands are taxed at the 20% other-income rate²⁰.

Thailand. The government lottery withholds stamp duty when you claim a prize: 1 baht of prize money for every 200 baht or fraction of 200 baht²¹. Personal income tax, though, does not apply to lottery prizes: winners of both ordinary and special charity lottery tickets are exempt, and the prize money does not need to be included in the annual personal income tax return²². So a THB 6,000,000 first prize loses only the stamp duty before it reaches your bank account.

The Philippines. Casino jackpots face a 20% withholding tax on individual payouts exceeding PHP 10,000, deducted by the casino under PAGCOR's regulatory manual²³. A slot jackpot of PHP 1,000,000 arrives as PHP 800,000. The casino handles the deduction at the counter, so the amount paid to you is already net of the tax.

Singapore and Macau: where the player is not taxed

At the other end of the spectrum sit Singapore and Macau.

Singapore and Macau are the easy cases in Asia: the tax systems there target the operators, not the players, so winnings are not taxed. Win S$2 million on a Toto draw and every dollar is yours, whether you are a citizen, a resident or a visitor.

Macau likewise does not tax individual recreational winners. Its heavy casino taxation, the 35% special gaming tax plus roughly 5% more for cultural, tourism and urban development support, is levied on the operators' gaming revenue and paid in monthly installments to the Macau finance authorities by the tenth day of the following month⁵. The player at the table never sees a deduction. One caveat: winnings that the authorities classify as professional gambling income may be subject to Complementary Tax, a point explained on our professional gambler tax page.

What the rules do not cover: casino table winnings and cross-border questions

Two gaps come up again and again.

First, casino table winnings in much of Asia simply have no player-level tax rule, because the tax systems were built around lotteries and betting pools. China's 20% rule covers lottery winnings; it does not extend to table games, which mainland Chinese players cannot legally play at home anyway. Japan taxes racing payouts and treats pachinko prizes as other income, but a Japanese national who gambles at a casino abroad is not punishable under Japanese law, since the acts occur entirely abroad²⁵. Vietnam's law lists casino winnings as taxable prize income¹⁶, but the practical mechanics for table-game winnings differ from lottery prizes. Our page on casino winnings tax works through these cases.

Second, cross-border questions. If you win in one country and live in another, the local withholding may not be the end of the story, and your home country's rules apply on top. That is the subject of the next two sections, and of our pages on double taxation and winnings tax for tourists.

Resident or visitor: which rules apply to you

In most of the countries above, the withholding rules apply to whoever walks up to the counter, resident or not. Vietnam's 10% prize tax calculation applies to both resident individuals and non-resident individuals⁴. China's lottery tax is withheld from any winner at redemption. South Korea's and Thailand's counter withholding applies to the payout itself. Singapore does not tax anyone's winnings.

Where residency does matter is in Japan, where the temporary income rules and filing duties are part of the general income tax system that applies to residents, and in the Philippines, where PAGCOR's regulatory manual applies a flat 20% withholding on individual payouts exceeding PHP 10,000 regardless of the winner's citizenship²³. If you are a non-resident visitor, see our dedicated page on tax on winnings for tourists; if you live in Asia on a long-term basis, the question of when you become a tax resident is covered under expat tax residency and winnings.

Home-country tax for expats

The last layer is the one expats most often forget: the country whose passport you hold. If you are a US citizen, for example, your worldwide income, including gambling winnings in Asia, generally remains taxable at home regardless of where you live, though foreign tax credits and treaties can offset some of the burden. Other countries tax on residence rather than citizenship, so if you have genuinely settled in Asia, your home country may have no claim at all.

The practical point is that withholding in Asia does not always satisfy your home country's tax authority. Tax withheld in Vietnam or India is paid to that country's tax department, and getting credit for it at home usually requires filing a return and claiming a foreign tax credit. Our pages on home-country tax on winnings and declaring gambling winnings walk through the common cases, and proving the source of gambling winnings covers the paperwork banks and tax authorities ask for when a large sum appears in your account.