Through a new decree, President Gustavo Petro’s administration has revived emergency economy taxes including a 16% VAT on online gambling. The government argues that these measures are necessary because resources are insufficient to address historic floods in northern Colombia which have left 14 dead and 120,000 people affected.
The Government has issued decrees that add COP 8.6 trillion to the revenue and capital resources budget of the General Budget of the Nation for the 2026 fiscal year.
To finance part of these resources, Decrees 0240 and 0241 establish a 16% consumption tax on bets placed through digital platforms.
The decree establishes that the provision of gambling services operated exclusively online will be subject to the new tax. The taxable event will be the deposit of money made by each user to the platform operator, understood as payments in cash, money transfers, or cryptocurrencies, made from within the national territory or from abroad.
Online gambling operators will be responsible for the consumption tax. The tax is payable every two months (bi-monthly) based on the GGR for that period.
According to the decree the absence of a permanent levy on this activity “had distorted the market by granting preferential treatment to online gambling over physical-establishment gambling, contrary to the principles of equity, efficiency, and generality that govern the tax system under the Political Constitution.”
The government argued that recent experience of a transitional levy on online gambling had demonstrated “the sector’s economic viability to bear tax burdens without affecting operations, with even significant increases in gross gaming revenue recorded.”
In addition the new regulations emphasise that online betting platforms and related services may only be run by authorized entities with concession contracts. It also warns financial institutions and others not to serve operators without proper authorization.
In February in order to fund relief efforts the Ministry of Finance Germán Ávila, announced that the government was once again considering new taxes on gambling.
The latest hike is another instance of the government using an emergency decree to increase taxes on the market.
In 2025 Colombia’s then Minister of Finance, Diego Guevara, announced that, based on the state of emergency decree due to the security crisis in Catatumbo, VAT would be implemented on online gambling.
The government later tried to make this tax permanent but in November Colombia’s Senate rejected it as well as other tax reforms.
However, in December Germán Ávila confirmed that the government would implement new taxes and tax adjustments in response to the economic emergency caused by the recent funding shortfall, a consequence of the failure of the financing law in Congress including taxes on gambling.
But in a major blow for the administration this too was rejected when Colombia’s Constitutional Court provisionally suspended the economic emergency decree with which the executive branch had sought to raise 16.3 trillion pesos (about US$ 4.465 billion dollars) to complete the 2026 national budget.
The post Colombian government adds a new 16% VAT rate to online gambling appeared first on G3 Newswire.
Through a new decree, President Gustavo Petro’s administration has revived emergency economy taxes including a 16% VAT on online gambling. The government argues that these measures are necessary because resources are insufficient to address historic floods in northern Colombia which have left 14 dead and 120,000 people affected. The Government has issued decrees that add…
The post Colombian government adds a new 16% VAT rate to online gambling appeared first on G3 Newswire.