Lima has one of the more serious live poker scenes in South America, and the online market has been formally licensed since 2024. So the question comes up constantly at the table: does SUNAT want a cut?
The answer is more favourable than most players expect, but it rests on legal theory rather than any line in the statute saying "poker winnings are exempt". That distinction is where a recreational player and a professional part ways.
Important: this is general information, not tax advice. Peruvian law has genuine grey areas here, and your situation depends on facts this article cannot see. Before acting on any of it, speak to a Peruvian contador or tax lawyer.
The vocabulary you need first
- UIT (Unidad Impositiva Tributaria) is a reference unit Peruvian tax law uses instead of writing fixed soles amounts into statutes. Thresholds are expressed in UITs and the value is reset annually. For 2026 the UIT is S/ 5,500, set by Decreto Supremo 301-2025-EF, published 17 December 2025. It was S/ 5,350 in 2025.
- RUC (Registro Único de Contribuyentes) is your taxpayer registration number with SUNAT. You need one if you carry on a business or independent professional activity. A salaried employee or purely recreational player generally does not.
- Categorías de renta. Peru does not have one undifferentiated "income". Article 22 of the Ley del Impuesto a la Renta sorts taxable income into five buckets: primera (property rent), segunda (other capital income such as interest and dividends), tercera (business income), cuarta (independent work) and quinta (employment). Each has its own deductions and rates. If your winnings are not income at all, they enter none of the five.
Are poker winnings taxable in Peru?
The governing statute is the Texto Único Ordenado de la Ley del Impuesto a la Renta, approved by Decreto Supremo 179-2004-EF. Article 1 defines what the tax reaches: income from capital, work or both, "entendiéndose como tales aquellas que provengan de una fuente durable y susceptible de generar ingresos periódicos"; capital gains; other income from third parties "establecidos por esta Ley"; and imputed income.
That first limb is the teoría de la renta producto: income means the yield of a durable source capable of periodic returns, the way a flat produces rent or capital produces interest.
Apply it to a recreational player. A poker win is not the yield of a durable source: you owned no productive asset and nothing about it is periodic. It is not a capital gain, because Article 2 requires the disposal of a capital asset. And it is on no list of "other income from third parties".
The counter is Peru's second income theory, the flujo de riqueza (flow of wealth), under which any enrichment from dealings with third parties counts. Read the final paragraph of Article 3, because this is the crux:
"En general, constituye renta gravada de las empresas, cualquier ganancia o ingreso derivado de operaciones con terceros."
It says de las empresas. The flujo de riqueza rule is written for businesses, not individuals. The only thing Article 3 adds for a persona natural is gains on derivative financial instruments. Gambling appears nowhere in Article 24's list of second-category income either.
The result: for a Peruvian individual playing recreationally, poker winnings sit outside the scope of the income tax. Not exempt, which would be a deliberate carve-out, but simply never captured. There is no line to report them on.
One warning. Peruvian gambling sites frequently claim betting winnings are renta de segunda categoría taxed at 5%, exempt up to 7 UIT. That rule appears nowhere in the Ley del Impuesto a la Renta, and Article 24 does not include gambling. Treat it with suspicion: the 7 UIT figure looks like a garbled borrowing of the Article 46 deduction, which applies to work income.
Does a Peruvian casino withhold from your prize?
For income tax, no. There is no withholding regime for casino prizes paid to individuals, which follows from the winnings not being income.
One separate municipal tax is worth knowing so it does not confuse you. The Impuesto a los Juegos (Decreto Supremo 156-2004-EF) covers lotteries, bingo and raffles, and Article 48 extends to "la obtención de premios en juegos de azar". Under Article 49 the taxpayer includes the person who obtains the prize, with the organiser withholding, and Article 51(c) sets 10% of prize value.
Casino games and slot machines were carved out when Ley 27153 created their own tax in 1999, and SUNAT's Informe 203-2003 confirms the Ley 27153 levy is a distinct tax. So a casino poker prize should not attract the 10%. Win a raffle or lottery-style promotion, though, and that 10% is real.
The casino tax: the house pays it, not you
This is the most misreported point. Ley 27153 created the Impuesto a los juegos de casino y máquinas tragamonedas. Article 4 defines juegos de casino as table games using cards, dice or roulette, which includes poker offered by a licensed house. But Article 37 makes the taxpayer "el que realiza la explotación": the operator.
Article 38, as amended by Ley 27796, sets the base as monthly net income (bets taken in, minus prizes paid out) less 2% for equipment maintenance, and Article 38.2(c) folds in the operator's commissions, which is how rake enters it. Article 39 sets the rate at 12%.
So the 12% taxes the house's gross gaming revenue and is priced into the rake you already pay. You file nothing for it, and it is not a tax on your winnings.
Online play: Ley 31557 and the ISC
Ley 31557 (2022), as amended by Ley 31806 (2023), regulates online gaming and sports betting, with its reglamento in Decreto Supremo 005-2023-MINCETUR, in force since February 2024. Two separate taxes come out of it.
The 12% Impuesto a los juegos a distancia. Article 3.7 defines juegos a distancia as remote games of chance "que pueden incluir componentes de habilidad o destreza", broad enough to capture online poker even though poker is not named. Article 40 states plainly that the taxpayers are the licensed operating companies. Players are not taxpayers. The base is net income (bets received, less bonuses, less prizes and refunds) minus a 2% maintenance allowance, at 12%. Another operator tax.
The ISC, which does touch you. Decreto Legislativo 1644 (September 2024) brought remote gaming and sports betting into the Impuesto Selectivo al Consumo. The base is "el valor de cada apuesta", the value of each bet, not your winnings. The rate ran at 0.3% until 30 June 2025 and has been 1% since 1 July 2025, under Decreto Supremo 008-2025-EF.
Who owes it depends on who runs the platform. Where the licensed operator is a Peruvian entity, the operator is the taxpayer. Where the platform is run by a company incorporated abroad, SUNAT identifies the player as the taxpayer and the foreign platform as collection agent (agente de percepción), deducting the 1% and remitting it. Peruvian residence is established by indicators such as IP geolocation, SIM card country code, use of a Peruvian payment method, or your account address.
Practically: online, 1% comes off every bet, collected at source. You file nothing, but it is a real cost against your win rate. A live player in a Lima casino is not touched by Ley 31557 or this ISC at all.
Recreational or professional: where it changes
This is the least settled area in Peruvian law, and I would rather say so than invent a clean threshold. There is no bright line, no hours count, no income level in the statute that converts a player into a business. SUNAT would have to argue your play is a durable, organised income-producing activity, so the renta producto reasoning above stops protecting you. If that argument succeeded, the likely landing spots are:
- Tercera categoría (Article 28) if characterised as a business. You would register for a RUC, keep accounting records, make monthly payments on account, deduct genuine expenses and pay 29.5% on net income under Article 55. The Régimen MYPE Tributario (Decreto Legislativo 1269) can reduce that to 10% on the first 15 UIT of annual net income, S/ 82,500 in 2026, with 29.5% above.
- Cuarta categoría (Article 33) if treated as the individual exercise of a trade or occupation. Article 45 allows a flat 20% deduction capped at 24 UIT, Article 46 adds a fixed 7 UIT deduction, and Article 53's progressive scale applies: 8% up to 5 UIT, 14% to 20 UIT, 17% to 35 UIT, 20% to 45 UIT, 30% above.
Neither fits cleanly. Article 28(a) describes habitually buying, producing and selling goods, which poker is not, and Article 33(a) is a residual catch-all. I could find no SUNAT informe or Tribunal Fiscal decision squarely classifying a professional poker player. If you play full time for a living, put this to a contador, and it deserves a written opinion rather than a forum answer.
Can you deduct losses?
For a recreational player, no, and it is not a grievance: if the winnings are not taxable, the losses are not deductible. There is no netting mechanism, no loss carry-forward, nothing to report.
If you are assessed as carrying on a business in tercera categoría, ordinary business rules apply and expenses and losses become relevant.
Offshore sites and money won abroad
Article 6 is the starting point: a person domiciled in Peru is taxed on worldwide income, regardless of nationality or where the source sits. Article 7(b) sets the test for foreigners at more than 183 calendar days in the country during any 12-month period; Peruvians domiciled in Peru under ordinary law are domiciled for tax. Article 8 adds a timing rule that catches people out: status is judged at the start of each tax year, and mid-year changes generally take effect only from the next one.
The consequence: the renta producto analysis does not change because the money came from a Las Vegas cash or an offshore site. If it is not income for a recreational player in Peru, being foreign-sourced does not make it income.
If you are classified as running a poker business, foreign-source rules bite. Article 51 requires you to net foreign-source results against each other, and only a net foreign profit is added to Peruvian taxable income; a net foreign loss is expressly never computable. Article 88(e) then credits income tax paid abroad, capped at the lower of your average Peruvian rate applied to that foreign income and the tax actually paid overseas, with any unused credit lost rather than carried forward or refunded. US tournament withholding is the common case, and it needs a contador.
Separately, a site not authorised by MINCETUR operates outside Peru's licensing regime: a regulatory and practical risk around access and payments, distinct from tax.
Filing and deadlines
If poker is your only meaningful activity and you are recreational, you likely have no poker-related filing obligation. The declaración jurada anual matters if you have other income requiring it, or if you are registered as a business.
SUNAT publishes a schedule each December keying the deadline to the last digit of your RUC. For the 2025 tax year, filed in 2026 under Resolución de Superintendencia 000386-2025/SUNAT, the general schedule ran from 26 March 2026 (RUC ending 0) to 10 April 2026 (RUC ending 9), with 13 April for good taxpayers and those without a RUC. Individuals use Formulario Virtual 709. Check the current resolution each year rather than assuming last year's dates.
What to keep, and why it matters more than you think
Here is the part players skip. Your winnings may be untaxed, but records are not optional.
Article 91 lets SUNAT determine your liability by presumption, including a presunción de renta neta por incremento patrimonial cuyo origen no pueda ser justificado: unexplained increases in wealth are presumed to be undeclared net income. Article 92 spells out what SUNAT examines: outward signs of wealth, changes in assets, purchases and sales, investments, deposits in domestic and foreign bank accounts, spending and consumption.
Read that again as a poker player. You deposit irregular cash, your balance climbs, and your declared income does not explain it. The burden falls on you to justify the origin, and "I won it playing poker" works only if you can evidence it. Without evidence, untaxable winnings can be recast as undeclared income and taxed.
So keep, at minimum: a dated record of every session with venue, buy-in, cash-out and result; tournament receipts and payout slips; cage records and bank statements; online account statements; and any foreign withholding certificates.
A per-session log is the backbone of all of it. If you record date, venue, buy-in, cash-out and result as you play, you can produce a consistent history on request instead of reconstructing years of cash games from memory. This is what PokerCharts is built to do, and it makes the record-keeping side of a SUNAT query considerably less painful.
The short version
- Recreational winnings fall outside Peruvian income tax: Article 1 requires a durable source, and Article 3's flujo de riqueza rule applies to businesses, not individuals.
- No income tax withholding on casino prizes. The 10% municipal games tax covers lotteries and raffles, not casino games.
- The 12% casino tax and the 12% online gaming tax are paid by operators, not players. Online only, a 1% ISC comes off each bet at source.
- Turning professional is the real open question, and it is unsettled. Get advice.
- The 2026 UIT is S/ 5,500. Keep records regardless, because of the unjustified wealth presumption in Articles 91 and 92.
Again: general information, not tax advice, current as of 2026. Rates, thresholds and SUNAT's interpretation change. Consult a qualified Peruvian contador before making decisions about your own filings.