Legislation
Chile – Chilean Gaming control Board pushes for online gambling regulation
By Phil - 19 July 2019
Chile may well be looking at following in the footsteps of a number of other Latin American jurisdictions and giving online gaming the green light.
In an interview granted to journalist Rodolfo Carrasco for Diario Financiero, the Head of the Chilean Gaming control Board (SJC) Vivien Villagrán Acuña said that there were a number of proposals to legislate online gambling. One proposal seeks to eliminate the ban and permit land based casino licence holders to run online gambling.
“You have to make a decision about what kind of legal initiative you want to develop, if it is something timely to allow operating companies to exploit online games or if what you expect is to have a little broader legislation, which takes charge of all the online gaming modalities that exist or could exist – how to generate a legal framework that is not obsolete in the short term is part of the challenge,” she said.
Villagrán Acuña used the United Kingdom and Colombia as examples of two countries with good regulations in place. In the UK, 50 per cent of the income obtained by regulated gambling comes from online gaming she said. As for Colombia, the only Latin American country with online gambling laws currently in place, online gambling has raised US$557m, in almost three years, thanks in part to a low tax rate she said.
Villagrán Acuña indicated that there are three important points that must be defined when putting new regulations in place: tax rates, entry requirements for new operators and rules on advertising. “Pennsylvania has the highest tax rate known, around 34 per cent, which has made very few interested in participating, and there are other very low rates, around 3 per cent, but there is also a combination in which one pays for a license and in addition to that, they pay tax. ”
According to the head of the SJC, any upcoming discussion and debate will focus on the rate compared to the rate currently in place for land based operators. Studies carried out by the SJC she said were designed so that the Executive has all the information available in order to make a decision on the issue.
Online gaming is expressly banned under Chile’s gaming laws of 2005. For now any Chilean can place bets on international online betting sites, as long as these are not based in the country, and may do so without being sanctioned by law.
