Colombian President Gustavo Petro signed an emergency decree last Thursday, re-imposing a 16% consumption tax on online gambling deposits to address severe flooding in eight provinces. This tax applies to all online operators providing services locally, regardless of whether their headquarters are in Colombia, and will be directly levied on each player's deposit. Simply put, when the flood comes and money is short, they start by taxing the casino players.
New Regulation Express: 16% Deposit Tax Directly Targets Online Gambling
The emergency decree aims to raise an additional 8.6 trillion pesos for the national budget by 2026. President Petro's term will end before the May elections this year, and he faced a major setback after his budget proposal for the end of 2025 was rejected, with the revised budget being 10 trillion pesos less than the original plan. The government considers this "insufficient for annual disaster and public disaster relief." Thus, gambling operators once again face a new tax burden on top of the standard 15% gambling tax in Colombia.
Lesson from the past: 19% VAT just stopped, 16% deposit tax comes back
Colombian licensed gambling industry already faced severe tax pressure in 2025, when the government imposed a 19% emergency VAT on deposits to address unrest in the Cartagena region. This tax led to a 30% decrease in online GGR, severely harming the health sector, which received 990 billion pesos from gambling taxes. The government's attempt to make this tax permanent through the "Financing Law" was rejected by the Senate last December, and the emergency decree was temporarily suspended by the Constitutional Court in January for being unconstitutional. Now, the government argues that it has the right to use tax tools again in different emergency situations.
Industry under pressure: An additional 16% on top of the standard 15%
No matter what scrutiny this new tax will face, the Colombian government insists that the tax measures taken in previous emergencies do not prevent it from using them again in subsequent special circumstances to address different crises. This means that online gambling operators will have to bear an additional 16% deposit tax on top of the regular 15% gambling tax. Want to know the latest updates on Latin American gambling tax? PASA official website keeps you updated.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel:https://t.me/pasa_news
Original in-depth gambling channel:https://t.me/gamblingdeep
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PASA Matrix: @pasa002_bot
PASA official website: https://www.pasa.news
