Short answer: yes, poker winnings are taxable in Colombia. In most cases they are treated as ganancia ocasional, a separate category from your regular income, taxed at a flat 20 percent, and a licensed casino withholds that 20 percent before it hands you the money. The edges are messier than that, especially if your poker looks less like a hobby and more like a job, so it is worth understanding what the law actually says.
This article is general information, not tax advice. Colombian tax rules change often, and how they apply depends on your residency, your total income and how you play. Before you file anything, sit down with a Colombian contador público and go through your own numbers.
Which bucket poker falls into
Colombia splits personal taxation into ordinary income (renta ordinaria) and occasional gains (ganancia ocasional). Gambling sits in the second bucket. Article 304 of the Estatuto Tributario, the country's tax code, is explicit: "Se consideran ganancias ocasionales para los contribuyentes sometidos a este impuesto, las provenientes de loterías, premios, rifas, apuestas y similares." Prizes paid in cash are valued at what you actually receive. Prizes in kind are valued at the commercial value of the item.
Poker is a juego de suerte y azar under Colombian law, regulated by Coljuegos, so a tournament payout or a jackpot reads naturally as a premio de apuestas y similares. Article 404 removes any doubt about bets specifically: for withholding purposes, apuestas get the same treatment as lottery income.
The rate is 20 percent, and it is not the standard one
This trips people up. The general occasional gains rate for resident individuals is 15 percent under article 314, as it stands after the 2022 tax reform (Ley 2277 de 2022). Prizes were deliberately left out of that. Article 317 still reads: "Fíjase en un veinte por ciento (20%), la tarifa del impuesto de ganancias ocasionales provenientes de loterías, rifas, apuestas y similares."
So poker money is taxed at 20 percent, not 15, and not at your marginal income tax rate. For a mid-stakes player that is often better than the alternative. For someone with very little other income it is worse, because there is no allowance and no bracket to sit under.
What the casino takes at the cage
You usually will not pay this tax yourself. Article 306 puts the obligation on the payer: whoever pays the prize must withhold the occasional gains tax at the moment of payment. Article 402 repeats the timing rule. This is the retención en la fuente, withholding at source, and it is the standard way Colombia collects on prizes.
Article 404-1 adds the threshold that matters most: withholding applies only when the individual payment exceeds 48 UVT. DIAN Oficio 908609 de 2021 confirms this is measured against each prize received, not the annual total. Four payouts of 40 UVT each attract no withholding. One payout of 60 UVT does.
Note carefully what that threshold does and does not do. Article 404-1 switches off the withholding mechanism. It does not create an exemption in article 317. In practice small prizes go untaxed because nobody collects and most recreational players never file, but that is a practical outcome, not a statutory exemption. If you file a return, the honest position is that the gain belongs in it.
What a UVT is, and the 2026 numbers
A UVT (Unidad de Valor Tributario) is an inflation-indexed accounting unit the DIAN republishes every year, so that thresholds written into the tax code do not have to be rewritten as the peso loses value. Every limit below is expressed in UVT and converted using the rate for the relevant year.
For 2026 the DIAN set the UVT at COP 52,374 (Resolución 000238 of 15 December 2025). For 2025 it was COP 49,799.
| Threshold | In UVT | 2025 (COP) | 2026 (COP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Withholding starts on a prize above | 48 | 2,390,352 | 2,513,952 |
| Gross income that forces a return | 1,400 | 69,718,600 | 73,323,600 |
| Gross assets that force a return | 4,500 | 224,095,500 | 235,683,000 |
Watch which year you are using. The return you file during 2026 covers tax year 2025 and uses the 2025 UVT. The 2026 UVT governs the return you will file in 2027.
Recreational player versus economic activity
This is the part with real money riding on it, and Colombian law does not give a clean test. The nearest thing to an official answer is DIAN Oficio 908609 de 2021, which draws the line at whether gambling forms part of the giro ordinario de sus negocios, the ordinary course of the taxpayer's business.
If it does, normal income tax rules apply under article 26, and the associated costs can be taken into account. If you are simply someone who received a prize, the DIAN's position is blunt: "no se puede afirmar que haya una noción de costo asociada al impuesto de ganancia ocasional para estos conceptos." No costs, no expenses, just 20 percent of the prize.
What pushes a player toward the business side is the same set of facts that would in most countries: poker is your main or only income, you play with regularity and system, you manage a bankroll as working capital, you stake others or are staked, you travel to play. None of these is decisive on its own, and the DIAN has not published a bright-line rule. Being treated as carrying on an economic activity is not automatically worse: the top marginal rate on the cédula general exceeds 20 percent, but deductible costs enter the picture, which for a high-volume player can matter more than the headline rate. This is exactly the question to put to a contador rather than guess at.
Can you offset losses?
For a recreational player, effectively no. Article 311 does allow occasional losses to be subtracted from occasional gains, but the concept of pérdida ocasional in the tax code is built around the disposal of assets, and the exclusions in article 312 are all about sales of shares and fixed assets. Nothing in that machinery contemplates a losing poker session. Combined with the DIAN's statement that there is no notion of cost attached to prize income, the practical result is that each winning payout is taxed gross, and your losing nights do not reduce it.
Whether a tournament buy-in can be netted off the payout before the 20 percent is applied is not something I could find clearly settled in DIAN doctrine. Article 304 values a cash prize by what is efectivamente recibido, and DIAN Oficio 1801 de 2018 reasoned along those lines when it allowed territorial taxes to be stripped out of the base first. Practice varies. Ask before you assume.
Online, offshore, and money won abroad
Colombia was an early regulator of online gambling and licenses internet operators through Coljuegos, which also pursues and reports unlicensed sites. A licensed Colombian operator is a withholding agent and should apply the 20 percent on qualifying payouts. An offshore site will not withhold anything, will not report you to the DIAN, and will not issue you a certificate.
That absence of paperwork does not make the money untaxed. Article 9 of the Estatuto Tributario is clear that residents are taxed on "sus rentas y ganancias ocasionales, tanto de fuente nacional como de fuente extranjera." Article 10 sets the residency test: broadly, more than 183 days in Colombia, continuous or not, within any 365-day period, plus several additional tests for Colombian nationals. If you are a Colombian tax resident, a score in Barcelona or a year of grinding on an offshore site is in scope in principle.
Relief for tax paid abroad is genuinely unsettled. Article 254 provides a credit for foreign taxes on rentas de fuente extranjera, and whether it reaches occasional gains from a foreign prize is contested, with at least one well-known Colombian tax commentator reading the code as offering no credit for this category. If you win something substantial overseas, resolve that question with a professional before you file, not after.
One piece of 2026 context worth knowing, though it is an operator tax rather than a player tax: the 19 percent IVA on online gambling gross gaming revenue was introduced by decree under an economic emergency (Decreto 1474 de 2025), and the Corte Constitucional struck that emergency down on 9 April 2026, leaving the IVA without effect and amounts paid refundable. A separate 16 percent national consumption tax on online GGR arrived through Decreto Legislativo 0240 de 2026. None of this changes your 20 percent, but it does change rake, promotions and which operators stay in the market, and the position has moved more than once this year.
Do you even have to file a return?
Many casual players do not. A resident individual must file for tax year 2025 if any one of these applied (using the 2025 UVT of COP 49,799):
- Gross assets at 31 December of 4,500 UVT or more, about COP 224.1 million
- Gross income of 1,400 UVT or more, about COP 69.7 million
- Credit card purchases above 1,400 UVT
- Total purchases and consumption above 1,400 UVT
- Bank deposits, consignaciones or financial investments above 1,400 UVT
- Being registered as responsible for IVA at 31 December
The trigger that catches poker players is the last money one. It counts deposits and movement through your accounts, not profit. A player who reloads and withdraws repeatedly through the year can cross 1,400 UVT of bank movement while finishing break-even or down. Gross income also includes occasional gains, so prizes count toward that 1,400 UVT line too. If you are anywhere near either number, run the arithmetic rather than assuming you are clear.
Filing mechanics
Resident individuals file Formulario 210. For tax year 2025, the deadlines run from 12 August to 26 October 2026, set by the last two digits of your NIT or cédula, excluding the verification digit: those ending 01 and 02 file first, those ending 99 and 00 last. The calendar comes from Decreto 2229 de 2023 and the DIAN's published schedule, and it works the same way every year with shifting dates.
Prize income goes in the occasional gains section of the form, not in the cédula general with salary and professional income. Any retención the operator already applied is credited against the tax due, which is why the certificate matters. The withholding agent is required to issue you a certificado de retención, so ask for it at the cage rather than chasing it in August. Filing late brings a sanción por extemporaneidad plus interest, and it is entirely avoidable.
What records the DIAN expects
Colombia runs an extensive third-party reporting regime (información exógena), which means the DIAN frequently already holds the operator's and the bank's version of your year before you file. Your job is to be able to reconcile with it. Keep:
- Every certificado de retención en la fuente issued to you
- Tournament entry receipts and payout slips
- Bank and payment-processor statements covering deposits and withdrawals
- Account histories or cashier records from any online site you used
- A dated record of the sessions themselves
That last one carries more weight than players expect. If you ever need to show that a large bank deposit was a documented tournament cash rather than unexplained income, or to argue about whether your play is recreational or an economic activity, a contemporaneous log written as you played is far stronger evidence than a reconstruction assembled two years later. A per-session record of date, venue or site, game and stakes, buy-in, cash-out and result also makes the return itself quick, because the figures your contador needs are already sitting in one place. This is exactly what PokerCharts is built to keep, and it is the single habit that turns filing season from a reconstruction project into an afternoon.
Bottom line
Poker winnings in Colombia are taxable as occasional gains at a flat 20 percent under article 317, withheld by licensed operators on any single payout above 48 UVT, which is COP 2,513,952 in 2026. Losses do not offset wins. Offshore and foreign winnings are still in scope for Colombian tax residents even though nobody withholds on them. Whether you have to file at all turns on thresholds that measure money moving through your accounts, not your profit. And if your poker has quietly become your profession, the classification question is worth resolving with a contador before the DIAN raises it for you.