Legislation
Peru – Congresswoman backs calls for changes to online gambling law
By James - 13 March 2023
Appearing before the Foreign Trade and Tourism Commission Congresswoman Lady Camones reaffirmed her support for changes to Peru’s online gambling law (Law 31557). The changes were put forward as part of Bill 3595/2022 which seeks to ensure that offshore operators also pay the new online gambling tax rate as well as landbased operators. Camones explained that her bill would aim to modify articles of Law 31557 so that it would encompass not just operators with a legal presence in Peru but also those operating from abroad.
Lawmakers are discussing how the direct tax applied to Net Income (Net Win) of 12 per cent will be collected via Bill 3595/2022 which seeks to ensure that offshore operators also pay the new online gambling tax rate. In its current form Law 31557 only applies to those operators with a physical presence in Peru. This means that locally based operators will be at an unfair advantage once the online gambling bill becomes law.
During the latest session, Congresswoman Camones affirmed that Law 31557 “leaves out the broadest sector of the activity: the companies that carry out the activity online but they are constituted outside the country, they do not have a branch and that they are totally virtual.” These companies, she said, made up as much as 70 per cent of the total number of operators.
Her project would rectify “this legal aberration and restore equality before the law to operators,” she went onto say.
The project also proposes that offenses for those operating online gambling from abroad without a license be incorporated into the Criminal Code with prison terms ranging from one year to four years while match fixing offenses would also become a crime on the statute book.
