Chile Fast-Tracks Online Gambling Bill With Top Urgency

Chile’s long-delayed plan to regulate online gambling is moving again. The executive granted Bill 14838-03 the highest legislative urgency on May 7, a procedural step that obliges the Senate to discuss the proposal within 15 days. The bill, which passed its general vote in the Senate last August, is now in its second constitutional reading, the stage at which senators settle the detail of a licensing, tax and enforcement framework for online betting platforms.

Few gambling bills in the region have waited longer. The proposal was introduced in March 2022 under the Piñera administration, kept alive through repeated urgency motions by the Boric government, and has now been accelerated again under President José Antonio Kast.

The new push follows a Supreme Court ruling in November that ordered internet providers to block access to illegal betting sites within five days. The court held that only Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, Lotería de Concepción and Teletrak are legally authorised to offer online gambling in Chile, a decision that left international operators with no route into the market until parliament builds one.

What Chile’s Online Gambling Bill Would Change

Operators would need a general operating licence and would have to incorporate in Chile as closed corporations with an exclusive business purpose, disclosing the origin of their funds, their shareholders and their ultimate beneficial owners.

The existing Superintendency of Gaming Casinos would become the Superintendency of Casinos, Betting and Games of Chance, with authority to grant licences, supervise technical compliance, sanction violations and access platforms remotely in real time to monitor bets, payments and financial flows.

Licensed operators would pay a 20% tax on gross gaming income, plus value-added tax, alongside a 1% contribution to responsible gaming initiatives. Users would face a 15% tax on winnings at withdrawal, and 2% of sports betting income would go to national sports federations.

Enforcement reaches beyond licensing. Operators would become obligated entities under anti-money-laundering rules, and a National Self-Exclusion Register would cover both online platforms and land-based casinos, with a minimum exclusion period of six months. Running a platform without a licence would carry prison terms and fines of 11 to 200 monthly tax units. Companies that operated in Chile during the 12 months before applying would be barred from a licence unless they regularise their position by paying a one-off 31% substitute tax on gross income from the previous 36 months.

The Tax Authority Moved First

While the Senate deliberates, Chile’s Internal Revenue Service has already acted. Through Exempt Resolution No. 69 of June 2, the SII incorporated foreign betting and casino platforms into the simplified tax regime for digital services, the same mechanism used by streaming and e-commerce providers. Offshore operators must now register and pay VAT on transactions with Chilean users, and may be required to settle obligations for up to 36 prior tax periods. The agency stressed that its role is to collect taxes, not to rule on whether an activity is legal.

The land-based industry sees a contradiction in that sequence. “This measure is not simply an act of tax collection. In practice, it operates as a covert regularisation mechanism, by incorporating into the state system operators who currently carry out an activity that the Supreme Court has deemed illegal,” said Cecilia Valdés, executive president of the Chilean Association of Casinos and Gaming (ACCJ).

The online sector reads it differently. The Chilean Association of Online Betting Platforms (aPAL) welcomed the resolution, arguing it corrects an anomaly that kept betting platforms out of a regime open to every other foreign digital provider, and that it strengthens the case for finishing the regulation itself.

Licensed Operators Would Not Start From Zero

If the bill passes, Chile becomes Latin America’s most closely watched market launch since Brazil went live in January 2025. The commercial question is how quickly demand moves from blocked grey-market sites to licensed ones, and in Europe that has depended on visibility as much as on enforcement.

Channelization in regulated markets has leaned heavily on the commercial layer that surrounds operators. Established affiliate networks already steer players toward licensed brands across dozens of jurisdictions, infrastructure that Chile’s first licensees would inherit on day one rather than build from scratch. Combined with the Supreme Court’s blocking orders and the SII’s new tax net, a licensed operator entering Chile would face less grey-market competition than incumbents did in markets that regulated a decade earlier.

The procedure now sets its own pace. The urgency motion forces the joint committees’ work onto the Senate floor within the 15-day window, and a vote in particular would send the amended text back to the Chamber of Deputies for final review. After four years and three administrations, the deadline pressure is no longer political. It is written into the legislative calendar itself.