How Macau's casinos pay for its government

How much of Macau's revenue comes from casinos

Casino gaming is legal in Macau and nowhere else in China, and the region's public finances rest on the tax it pays. Casinos pay 35% of their gross gaming revenue as gaming tax, according to the Macao Yearbook, plus two contributions of up to 2% and 3% for social and economic purposes, which Wikipedia's article on gambling in Macau puts at a maximum of 40% in all, with fixed premiums per table and machine on top. The Financial Services Bureau collected MOP 94.9 billion in gaming tax in 2025, 7.6% more than in 2024 and above the budgeted MOP 93.1 billion.

The base of that tax is a single kind of game. Of MOP 183.059 billion in casino gross revenue in 2023, baccarat brought in MOP 110.49 billion and VIP baccarat a further MOP 45.189 billion, according to the yearbook.

Gross gaming revenue reached MOP 247.4 billion in 2025, up 9.1% on 2024, according to figures from the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau reported by Yogonet. That was about 84.7% of the 2019 level. The 2023 total was MOP 183.7 billion, a rise of 328.8% on 2022, the year before travel restrictions were relaxed.

How Macau's casino monopoly became six concessions

The Portuguese administration legalised gambling to raise revenue, in 1849 according to Wikipedia's article on gambling in Macau, and later licensed the fantan houses. A monopoly concession went to the Tai Heng company in 1937, and in 1962 the government gave the monopoly over all forms of gambling to the Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, which introduced Western games and modernised the sea link with Hong Kong. Its licence, extended in 1986, ran out at the end of 2001.

After the handover the government opened the market. In 2002 it granted three concessions, later six through subconcessions, to operators from Macau, Las Vegas and Australia. The Sands Macao opened on 18 May 2004, Wynn Macau in 2006 and the Venetian Macao and MGM Grand Macau in 2007, and the Cotai reclamation filled with resorts. Wikipedia's account of Macau gives a sevenfold multiplication of gross domestic product between 1999 and 2016, with unemployment falling from 6.3% to 1.9%.

What the new casino concessions changed

A public tender ended in December 2022. On 16 December the Chief Executive signed ten-year contracts, in force from 1 January 2023, with six companies: MGM Grand Paradise, Galaxy Casino, Venetian Macau, Melco Resorts (Macau), Wynn Resorts (Macau) and SJM Resorts. Between them the six promised to invest MOP 118.8 billion over the decade, MOP 108.7 billion of it in overseas customer markets and non-gaming projects and MOP 10.1 billion in gaming, with the non-gaming work spread across ten areas from conventions to sport and healthcare.

The same reform capped the floor. From 1 January 2023 each concessionaire may run at most 6,000 gaming tables and 12,000 machines. At the end of 2023 there were 30 casinos, 13 of them run by SJM Resorts. The junket trade, which had brought high rollers to private rooms on credit since the 1980s, has since been shut down by Beijing, and Yogonet reports that operators have turned to premium and mass-market players.

How Macau regulates betting outside the casino floor

The casino concessions cover land-based gaming only, and no licence exists for online casinos. The Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau referred 2,285 suspected illegal gaming websites to the Judiciary Police in 2023, 22% fewer than in 2022, according to the yearbook. The legal gambling age is 21, and since 2004 credit granted for casino gaming has been enforceable in Macau's courts under Law No. 5/2004.

The older forms of betting have closed. The Canidrome, the greyhound track, shut on 21 July 2018, and volunteers moved 517 dogs to adopters abroad and in Macau. The Macau Jockey Club's racecourse on Taipa closed on 1 April 2024, ending horse racing. Smoking was banned on casino floors from October 2014 over the industry's opposition, after dealers complained about their working conditions, and the ban was extended to VIP rooms at the start of 2019.

What Macau made before the casinos took over

Fishing was the main livelihood after Hong Kong drew the trade away: in the early 1920s more than 70% of Macau's 84,000 residents worked in it, according to Wikipedia's economy of Macau, beside small factories for matches, firecrackers and incense. In the 1970s Hong Kong industrialists moved textile and garment production to Macau to use its spare quotas under the Multi Fibre Arrangement. In the 1980s manufacturing made up about 40% of GDP, and textiles and garments about 90% of visible exports.

The yearbook gives manufacturing's share of GDP as 20.6% in 1989 and 1% in 2022. In 2023 Macau exported goods worth MOP 13.34 billion, of which only MOP 1.55 billion were domestic products and MOP 11.79 billion re-exports. Hong Kong took 71.5% of exports and the mainland 7.3%. A Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement with the mainland lets qualifying goods in without tariffs; over its first 20 years MOP 1.42 billion of goods entered under it.

How the economy fell and recovered after the pandemic

The pandemic stopped the visitors on whom the casinos depend. Wikipedia's economy of Macau records a contraction of 55.3% in GDP in 2020. Monthly visitors fell from about three million before the pandemic to fewer than one million in 2021, and unemployment, which had averaged about 2% over the previous decade, reached 4.6% in the first quarter of 2022.

The International Monetary Fund, in its Article IV consultation of February and March 2024, projected growth of 13.9% for 2024 and a return to pre-pandemic output in 2025, settling to a long-term potential of 3.0%. The Statistics and Census Service's preliminary figures for 2025 show real growth of 4.7%, to MOP 417.28 billion, or 89.6% of GDP in 2019. The fourth quarter of 2025 grew 7.6% year on year, to 94.1% of the same quarter of 2019, with exports of services up 9.8% on a 15.4% rise in visitor arrivals. In the third quarter, exports of gaming services grew 14.3% and of other tourism services 7.4%, while gross fixed capital formation fell 26.1% as private and public construction declined.

Who works in Macau and what they earn

In 2023 the labour force numbered 375,200, and unemployment was 2.7% overall and 3.4% among residents, according to the yearbook. Of 365,200 people in work, 21.9% were in recreational, cultural, gaming and other services, the category that holds the casinos, 12.8% in wholesale and retail and 12.6% in hotels and restaurants. The gaming industry itself employed 51,771 people at the end of 2023, 23,359 of them dealers.

Pay follows the sector. The median monthly earning of the employed population was MOP 17,500 in 2023 and of local residents MOP 20,000. Public administration paid the highest median, MOP 45,000. Full-time gaming staff averaged MOP 25,290 a month excluding bonuses, and dealers MOP 20,870. The tax system is light elsewhere: Wikipedia's article on Macau describes taxes on personal income, residential property and retail sales as negligible to non-existent, and gaming revenue funds an annual cash payment to residents.

Housing is priced against that pay. The average price of residential space in 2023 was MOP 93,500 per square metre of usable floor area, down 0.3% on 2022: MOP 89,956 on the peninsula, MOP 97,367 on Taipa and MOP 107,512 on Coloane. There were 2,879 residential sales that year.

Much of the work is done by people who are not residents. At the end of 2023 Macau had 176,661 non-resident workers, 14.0% more than a year before; hotels and catering employed 28.0% of them, construction 17.1% and domestic work 14.6%.

How the pataca is tied to Hong Kong's dollar

The pataca runs on a currency board. The Monetary Authority of Macao, which acts as a quasi-central bank and has managed the fiscal reserves since a law of 2011, must issue and redeem patacas against Hong Kong dollars on demand at a fixed rate of MOP 1.03 to the Hong Kong dollar, and the currency is fully backed by foreign exchange reserves. Two banks issue the notes: the Banco Nacional Ultramarino, and the Bank of China since October 1995, an arrangement agreed during the transition. Hong Kong dollars account for more than half of bank deposits, and capital moves freely. The IMF described the link in 2024 as credible support for Macau's stability.

How Macau built its fiscal reserve

Surpluses go into a fiscal reserve set up in early 2012 and invested by the Monetary Authority. It started with MOP 98.86 billion transferred from the old reserve fund and past budget balances, while MOP 54.2 billion went to the foreign exchange reserve. At the end of 2023 the fiscal reserve held assets of MOP 580.5 billion, MOP 22.5 billion more than a year earlier. Its basic tranche must equal 1.5 times the spending provisions of central departments in the latest approved budget, and the excess above that is available for policy and to keep public finances liquid.

The banking system held assets of MOP 2,428.1 billion at the end of 2023, with deposits of MOP 1,223.4 billion and loans of MOP 1,093.3 billion, a loan to deposit ratio of 89.4%.

How Macau is trying to broaden its economy

The government's development plan for appropriate economic diversification from 2024 to 2028 is known as 1+4: keep tourism, and build four more fields: health and traditional medicine; finance; technology; and sport and culture, including conventions and exhibitions. Gaming taxes still made up 82.7% of total tax revenue of MOP 114.6 billion in 2025, and 90.7% of all government revenue in January and February 2026, according to Financial Services Bureau figures reported by Inside Asian Gaming.

Much of the new activity is meant to sit across the border. The Guangdong-Macao In-depth Cooperation Zone on Hengqin, set up under a general plan of 5 September 2021 and run jointly by both governments, charges enterprise income tax of 15% on qualifying industries and caps the personal income tax of scarce talent at 15%. Its listed industries include research and high-end manufacturing; traditional Chinese medicine and other Macau brands; conventions and tourism; and modern finance. The IMF's advice in 2024 ran the same way: more public investment in education, training, healthcare, basic research and infrastructure that can withstand the climate, support for small firms moving their business online, and closer integration with the Greater Bay Area. The Macao Gaming Committee follows the concessionaires' non-gaming commitments for the government, project by project. Macau also hosts the permanent secretariat of Forum Macao, set up by China's Ministry of Commerce in 2003 to build economic ties with Portuguese-speaking countries.