Chile Moves to Tax a $3bn Offshore Betting Market It Still Calls Illegal

Chile's Internal Revenue Service (Servicio de Impuestos Internos, SII) has created a way to collect value-added tax from offshore betting and online casino platforms serving Chilean players, without those platforms being legal. On June 2, 2026, the SII published Exempt Resolution No. 69, which lets operators with no domicile or residence in Chile register, declare and pay VAT on transactions with Chilean users. The resolution folds betting and online casino into the same simplified digital-VAT regime already used for streaming, software and cloud services supplied from abroad. SII National Director Jorge Trujillo told the Senate Economy Commission that the measure could bring in more than US$100 million a year.

The number is large because the untaxed activity behind it is large. Chile's total gambling revenue ran at roughly US$2.49 billion in 2025, and the offshore online channel is a substantial untaxed share: more than five million Chileans used online platforms in 2024, generating over US$3.1 billion that went untaxed. Roughly 3,800 offshore operators target the country, and an estimated eight in ten online players use them. The grey market expanded further after Chile closed the route that let sites operate from Curacao and Isle of Man licences, and after the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court (case 18.080-2025) ordered internet providers to block identified illegal betting domains within five days, naming Lotería de Concepción as plaintiff.

Meanwhile the legal, licensed land-based sector is shrinking. Chile's 22 licensed casinos under Law No. 19,995 reported gross gaming revenue of CLP 509.826 billion (about US$540 million) in 2025, down 4.5% in real terms, with total visits down 7.2% to 926,873 people, according to the Superintendence of Casinos. Those venues paid CLP 214 billion (about US$227 million) in taxes for the year. The Chilean Association of Casinos and Gaming (ACCJ) has tied that decline directly to the surge in unregulated online play.

A tax mechanism, not a license

The SII has framed Resolution No. 69 as fiscal, not regulatory. "The SII with this resolution 69 is not encouraging the activity; what we are doing is collecting owed taxes," Trujillo told senators on June 9, 2026. SII Normative Subdirector Simon Ramirez added that "the focus reduces only to applying the corresponding taxes; we verify the operative fact," referring to the existence of a taxable transaction rather than the legality of the underlying business. The agency points to earlier precedent, including its 2020 circular and 2023 Resolution 26, and a 36-period lookback window for operators to regularize past VAT.

The framing has not settled the dispute. Renovación Nacional deputy Diego Schalper said: "One cannot classify an activity as illegal and, in parallel, feel the need for it to pay taxes. The illegal cannot pay taxes." In the Senate Economy Commission, which he chairs, Socialist senator Gaston Saavedra said: "What emerges with resolution 69 is regularization before society of an illicit activity." PPD senator Ricardo Celis questioned both the director's authority and the consistency between the SII's 2023 position and its current one. The commission voted to summon the Superintendent of Casinos and to send an official letter to the Supreme Court asking for its opinion on the potential contradiction between the administrative resolution and the court's rulings. The Comptroller General (Contraloría) has also asked the SII to explain the resolution. Resolution 69 took effect while a separate full licensing bill remains unfinished.

What full regulation would bring

The tax move runs ahead of bill 14838-03, the online betting licensing bill that is in its second constitutional stage in the Senate. Introduced in March 2022 under President Piñera, retained under Boric and accelerated under President Kast, it cleared an earlier Senate vote in August 2025 (27 in favor, 3 against, 5 abstentions). The executive granted it the highest legislative urgency on May 7, 2026, obliging the Senate to take it up within 15 days. As drafted, the tax load would be substantial:

Operators would need a general operating licence and a closed-corporation structure with an exclusive object, with prison terms and fines of 11 to 200 monthly tax units for operating unlicensed. Only three entities are currently authorized to take bets: Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, Lotería de Concepción and Teletrak.

For affiliates, Chile is a sizable LatAm market that is now formalized at the cashier without being legal at the front door. The licensing terms taking shape are not lenient: the 31% back-tax on three prior years and the 12-month application bar mean an operator promoted today could pay heavily for that history once licensing opens. Brazil shows what the regulated phase looks like in numbers. Its market launched on January 1, 2025; in its first year, 79 licensed companies took bets from 25.2 million Brazilians, generated about BRL 37 billion (about US$7 billion) in gross gaming revenue, and paid close to BRL 10 billion (about US$1.9 billion) in tax plus roughly BRL 2.5 billion (about US$470 million) in licence fees at BRL 30 million per licence. Under Complementary Law 224/2025 its GGR tax rises from 12% toward 15% by 2028. Affiliates building Chilean traffic now are working inside a window the Senate bill is moving to close.