Any tax debate around Colombia’s legal gaming industry should start with one basic clarification: the question is not whether the formal sector should contribute. It already does, and it has done so for years through multiple channels. The problem begins when the burden stops responding to a coherent tax architecture and starts to look like a sequence of measures activated according to the State’s immediate cash needs.
At that point, the sector no longer sees a long-term public policy. It begins to feel a moving tax pressure, where the instruments may change, but the underlying logic remains the same: to extract quick revenue from those who are already identified, regulated, and required to comply.
That is why the recent conversation cannot be reduced to the new levy on online gaming alone. First came the attempt to impose a 19% VAT through an emergency decree. Then, after the Constitutional Court’s provisional suspension, came Decree 0240 of 2026, creating a 16% national consumption tax for games operated exclusively online. The name of the tax changed, and so did the legal vehicle, but the signal remained the same: digital gaming continues to be treated as a sector available for exceptional revenue extraction. And while that is happening, the rest of the ecosystem remains under pressure from other fronts, including the 3.5% self-withholding rate applicable to sector activities.
The deeper issue is that this pressure does not fall only on online operators. It also reaches casinos, bingo halls, localized gaming, and other formal operators that already carry exploitation rights, indirect taxes, withholdings, and regulatory obligations. In other words, the industry that does pay, does report, and does remain fully visible to the State is precisely the one that receives new layers of burden every time a regulatory opening appears. Meanwhile, structural questions continue to move much more slowly: business sustainability, transition costs, legal certainty, and regulatory predictability. Even in settings such as GAT Cartagena 2026, where figures and institutional messages dominated the stage, key questions remained unresolved regarding homologation, installed base, and the economic viability of the transition process.
This is reinforced by a pattern that is becoming increasingly recognizable: the State tightens on one side, while simultaneously opening windows for tax normalization, settlements, relief mechanisms, and payment facilities on the other. From a fiscal perspective, the formula is efficient: pressure, accelerate, and then offer a way out to capture short-term liquidity. But from the industry’s perspective, that dynamic is no substitute for a serious tax policy. An industry cannot live indefinitely between new charges, temporary relief, and continuous redesigns in mid-course. That does not create confidence. It creates permanent contingency management.
The formal gaming industry can live with taxation. What it does not absorb well is fiscal improvisation turned into method. Because when revenue is pursued through every available instrument, without resolving the long-term framework, the message the market receives is not one of strengthening. It is one of erosion.
