Betfred brothers named the UK’s biggest taxpayer for the first time

The brother duo behind the UK betting shop chain Betfred has been named the UK’s biggest taxpayer for the first time.

Brothers Fred and Peter Done, founders of bookmaker chain Betfred, have been named in the top spot of The Sunday Times Tax List, a round-up of the UK’s highest-paying taxpayers in 2025. The brothers paid £400.1 million ($547.7 million) tax over the last year, coming in ahead of various other rich names and families, including Harry Styles, aristocrats, and entrepreneurs.

But he's right in saying the UK does have a billionaire problem.

Too many of them are leaving. We need them to stay, invest, create jobs – and pay tax.

Today's Sunday Times names the top 100 taxpayers. https://t.co/BYxziCcXCR https://t.co/QLF357Sc2A pic.twitter.com/bzrtArOXA2

— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) February 1, 2026

In total, the 100 individuals and families included on the list paid £5.758 billion ($7.88 billion) in taxes in the UK, a 15.5% increase from the year before. The Betfred brothers are in the top spot with a clearance of £68.7 million ($94 million).

The duo got their start in the world of betting with a winning wager for England to win the 1966 World Cup. They used those winnings to open the first Betfred shop, with over 1,300 shops now open in the UK in 2025.

However, Fred Done warned last year that a tax hike could see those locations forced to shut down, saying that the tax rises would be the “biggest threat” to the industry in his lifetime. This warning was followed by a steep rise in UK betting taxes, much as Done had feared.

The next entry on the Sunday Times list is Alex Gerco, a Moscow-born trader based in London who paid £331.4 million ($453.6 million) in taxes last year.

Betfred’s not just paying high taxes

As well as the Done brothers’ personal hefty tax bill, the company itself was slapped with a large bill at the end of 2025, after Betfred was found “unable to effectively identify and manage money laundering risks” related to their gaming machines and failed to “identify spend and associated financial indicators of gambling harm for customers using B3 gaming machines.”

This landed the company with a £825,000 ($1.1 million) fine.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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