A new emergency decree issued by Colombian President Gustavo Petro has reintroduced a tax on online gambling deposits, aimed at funding flood recovery efforts across the country. Colombia Tax Gambling
In response to devastating floods affecting eight provinces, the Colombian government has revived a tax on online gambling deposits through emergency decrees issued last Thursday. The tax is set at a rate of 16% and is specifically targeted at online operators providing services within Colombia, whether they are based domestically or abroad. This levy will be applied to cash deposits made by players into online gambling platforms.
The decrees, signed by President Petro, also aim to raise an additional COP8.6 trillion ($2.3 billion) to support the country’s 2026 budget. However, Petro, whose four-year term concludes this year ahead of May’s elections, faced setbacks earlier in 2025 when his original budget proposal was rejected. A revised version was eventually approved but was COP10 trillion lower than initially planned. The government has now acknowledged that this reduced allocation is “insufficient for the annual provision for disaster and public calamity relief.”
Consequently, gambling operators will once again face a new tax in addition to Colombia’s standard 15% gambling levy. Colombia’s licensed gambling industry experienced significant tax pressures in 2025. In February of that year, the government introduced an emergency 19% value-added tax (VAT) on deposits, responding to civil unrest in the Catatumbo region and claiming the funds were necessary for crisis management.
By April, the Colombian Federation of Gambling Entrepreneurs reported a 30% decline in online gross gaming revenue (GGR) since the VAT’s implementation. This downturn had a notable impact on the sector, which contributed COP990 billion in taxes to the health sector in 2024.
Efforts to make the VAT permanent failed when the Colombian Senate’s Fourth Committee rejected the Financing Law that included it in December. Although the VAT was later shifted from a deposit-based to a GGR-based model, this emergency decree was suspended in January by the Colombian Constitutional Court over concerns of unconstitutionality.
Read also: BETER secures supplier licence in Arizona
It remains uncertain what level of scrutiny this new attempt to impose a gambling tax will face. However, the government asserts it has the authority to implement it as a response to a different emergency.
“The adoption of tax measures in a previous emergency does not prevent the national government from using them again in a subsequent exceptional situation to address a different crisis,” the decree stated. Colombia Tax Gambling
