This is general information, not tax advice. Argentine tax rules move fast and depend on your circumstances. Before acting on anything here, speak to an Argentine contador público who understands gambling income. Everything below reflects the law as we read it in August 2026.
The short answer
Argentina has no tax written for poker players. What you owe turns on one question: are you someone who happens to win at poker, or someone who plays it as an occupation?
For most recreational players, occasional winnings sit outside the income tax altogether. Not exempt, but outside its scope. Play regularly and systematically enough that poker looks like a trade, and the winnings become taxable income.
That line is not drawn by a statute with a number on it. It comes from a general definition of income, and anyone who quotes you a clean threshold is guessing.
Two regimes: the prize tax and the income tax
The first regime is the impuesto a los premios, created by Ley 20.630. Article 1 applies it to prizes won in juegos de sorteo, meaning lotteries, raffles and similar draws, and to sports-prediction pools other than horse racing, organised in Argentina by official or licensed bodies. Quiniela is carved out.
Two features matter. The rate is 31 percent on a base fixed at 90 percent of the prize, an effective 27.9 percent. And under article 2 the organiser is the taxpayer, not you: the payer withholds before handing over the prize, and the law states that winners "no serán responsables del impuesto".
Here is the point most articles miss. A poker tournament is not a lottery, a raffle or a sports-prediction pool, so on the face of article 1 the prize tax does not reach poker. It catches the lottery ticket you bought on the way to the casino, not the tournament you won inside it.
That matters, because the income tax law exempts what the prize tax already caught: article 26(s) covers "los beneficios alcanzados por la Ley de Impuesto a los Premios". Since poker sits outside Ley 20.630, that exemption is not what protects a recreational player. Something else does.
The recreational player
The income tax law is Ley 20.628. For individuals, article 2 paragraph 1 defines income as returns or enrichments "susceptibles de una periodicidad que implique la permanencia de la fuente que los produce y su habilitación".
Practitioners call this the teoría de la fuente, the source theory, and ARCA states the same test in its own guidance. Income is taxable when it comes from a source that is durable, deliberately put to work, and able to keep producing.
A one-off win meets none of that. Note also what article 2 does not say: unlike some countries, its list of taxable income never mentions gambling, betting or prizes for individuals. So the widely held reading is that a casual player's winnings are simply not income for tax purposes. Not exempt: never in the tax base.
Argentina did once tax windfalls, but Ley 23.760 repealed that regime from 1 January 1990. With no general windfall tax since, the analysis stops at article 2.
The caveat: this rests on doctrine rather than a rule naming poker, and we could locate no published ARCA ruling or court decision dealing specifically with poker players.
The habitual or professional player
Turn the source theory around and the problem appears. A player who plays constantly, manages a bankroll and lives off the results has exactly what article 2 describes: a durable source, deliberately activated, producing recurring income. Those winnings are taxable.
The natural home is cuarta categoría under article 82(f), covering "el ejercicio de profesiones liberales u oficios". That is what Argentine commentators apply to the closest analogue, professional athletes' prize money. Run it through a business structure or an empresa unipersonal, or combine it with a commercial operation such as staking others, and it shifts to tercera categoría under article 53, where the source test stops mattering.
Tax then follows the progressive scale in article 94: nine brackets from 5 percent to 35 percent. For fiscal year 2025, 5 percent started at the first ARS 1,749,902 of taxable income and 35 percent applied above ARS 53,153,257. Since Ley 27.743 those figures are re-indexed twice a year, in January and July, by the INDEC price index, so work from the current table.
One trap for the self-employed: the deducción especial, your largest personal deduction, is conditional on actually paying your compulsory autónomo contributions to SIPA. Skip those and you lose it.
What the law does not give you is a bright line. There is no session count and no earnings threshold, only a judgement about whether the activity has become an occupation. If poker is a meaningful part of your income, plan for ARCA taking the habitual view.
The 41.5 percent number, and why it is probably not yours
Search for Argentine poker tax and you will hit a 41.5 percent rate that names poker outright. Read it carefully before you panic. Ley 27.346 inserted a paragraph into article 73 taxing at 41.5 percent the income "derivadas de la explotación de juegos de azar en casinos (ruleta, punto y banca, blackjack, póker y/o cualquier otro juego autorizado)", adding that the rate reaches individuals as well as companies.
The load-bearing word is explotación, meaning operating the business. Article 73 sets the rates for corporate and business income: it taxes the house, not the players at the table. The reference to individuals catches someone running a gambling operation in their own name rather than through a company. Still, it does say personas humanas, and we found no ruling settling the point, so raise it with your accountant.
Can you deduct losses?
If you are outside the tax as a recreational player, the question does not arise: you cannot deduct losses from an activity whose wins are not taxed. That symmetry is the price of the favourable treatment.
If you are taxed as a habitual player, you are taxed on net results, so buy-ins for losing sessions are a cost of earning the income. Two limits matter. Losses not absorbed in the year carry forward but expire after five years. And foreign-source losses can only offset foreign-source income: a losing trip to Las Vegas does not cut the tax on a winning year in Buenos Aires.
Online play and offshore sites
Online betting carries its own tax, and this one genuinely lands on the player. Ley 27.346, as rewritten by Ley 27.591, created the impuesto indirecto sobre apuestas online. Article 2 makes the bettor the taxpayer and requires the intermediary processing the payment to collect it. Article 1 presumes the bet happens in Argentina based on your SIM code or IP address, billing address, or the card used.
The rate applies to the net value of the deposits you make into your gaming account. Read that again: it taxes money going in, not winnings coming out. Decreto 293/2022 confirms the base is what you load "con independencia del resultado", and that the bettor bears the tax. You pay whether you win or lose.
| Situation | Rate on net deposits |
|---|---|
| Argentine operator, registered, meets local-investment test | 2.5 percent |
| Argentine operator, registered, no qualifying investment | 5 percent |
| Argentine operator, not registered | 7.5 percent |
| Foreign operator involved, directly or indirectly | 10 percent |
| Foreign operator in a non-cooperative or low-tax jurisdiction | 15 percent |
For a typical offshore poker site, 10 percent is the tier to expect, and 15 percent where the operator sits in a listed jurisdiction. This is a standalone indirect tax, not an advance payment of income tax, so it is a real cost you do not recover later.
Whoever processes your deposit collects it, including payment aggregators. ARCA publishes a list of foreign betting operators on its juegos de azar micrositio so intermediaries know which rate to apply. A separate tax on gaming machines falls on the operator, not the player.
Winnings abroad and the currency problem
Article 1 of the income tax law is blunt: residents pay tax on worldwide income. A cash in Barcelona or Las Vegas is inside the Argentine tax base if you are resident and taxable on poker at all.
You can credit foreign taxes actually paid, but only up to the extra Argentine tax caused by including that income. Article 166 puts the point beyond doubt for poker: it states that impuestos análogos include withholdings made abroad as a single and definitive payment, which is exactly what a US casino does to a tournament cash. Two practical limits. Argentina has no tax treaty with the United States, so there is no reduced rate to claim and no treaty form to file: the US takes its 30 percent and your only relief is the Argentine credit. And an unused credit carries forward five fiscal years, then is lost.
It is worth being blunt about how badly Argentines are placed in the United States specifically, because it is worse than most players assume. The 30 percent comes off the gross payout, not your profit, so a trip where you fire ten buy-ins and cash once is taxed on the cash as though the other nine never happened. Residents of treaty countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, France and Germany are exempt outright and file a form to prove it. Canadians cannot claim exemption but are allowed to deduct their US losses against their US winnings. An Argentine resident gets neither. There is no netting and, since 30 percent of gross is genuinely the correct tax, filing a US return afterwards will not usually recover anything.
One quirk in your favour, and it does not help poker. US law specifically exempts a non-resident's winnings from blackjack, baccarat, craps, roulette and the big-6 wheel. That list is exhaustive and poker is not on it, so the pit is tax-free for a visiting Argentine while the poker room is not.
Then currency, which in Argentina is never trivial. Article 155 of the current consolidated text requires foreign-currency amounts to be converted at the Banco de la Nación Argentina rate, buying or selling as applicable, at the close of the day the transaction occurs. For income specifically that means the tipo de cambio comprador, on the day the income is imputed, which for an individual player is the day it is collected. Older sources cite article 158, which is the superseded 1997 numbering. So the date matters as much as the amount: use the wrong day's rate and you report the wrong figure. And the official rate is the one the law points to, whatever rate you personally could get.
One thing is settled: the impuesto PAIS, which taxed foreign-currency purchases, ran for five fiscal periods from December 2019 and lapsed on 22 December 2024. It is gone, and it was not renewed.
Do not confuse that with the perception regime, which is very much alive. General Resolution 5617/2024 replaced the old regime and kept a 30 percent perception on card spending abroad, on foreign services paid by card and on cash advances taken abroad. What did go, from April 2025, is the perception on individuals simply buying dollars to save. The 30 percent is not a tax in its own right: it counts as a payment on account of your income tax, or of bienes personales if you are not an income tax payer, and you reclaim any excess in your annual return. If you have seen a "dólar tarjeta" quoted at exactly 1.3 times the official rate, that is this perception, not an exchange rate.
Funding an offshore account with an Argentine card
Worth knowing before you try it. The Banco Central's foreign-exchange rules require a bank or card issuer to get prior Central Bank approval before paying abroad for card charges arising from "la participación en juegos de azar y apuestas de distinto tipo". In practice that approval is not given, so funding an offshore poker account with an Argentine card is effectively blocked, and the same restriction covers payment-service-provider accounts and crypto purchases. This is an exchange-control rule rather than a tax one, but it shapes how Argentine players actually move money, and it sits behind a lot of the workarounds you will hear discussed.
Bienes personales: your online balance counts
Separately from income tax, Argentina taxes wealth. Residents are assessed on assets held in the country and abroad, and a balance sitting in a foreign poker account or an e-wallet is an asset: it is a credit against a debtor domiciled abroad under article 20 of Ley 23.966, and no exemption covers it. The exemption for bank deposits applies only to deposits in Argentine institutions.
Rates have been falling on a legislated path: for fiscal year 2026 the scale runs from 0.50 to 0.75 percent, dropping to a flat 0.25 percent for 2027, applied above a non-taxable minimum that is re-indexed each year. The old penalty scale that taxed foreign assets more heavily than domestic ones is gone. Crypto is the genuinely unsettled corner: the statute does not mention it, and its taxability rests on the tax authority's own published interpretation rather than on express wording. Declaring is the compliant course, but do not let anyone tell you the text is clear, because it is not.
Provincial tax: ingresos brutos
Cross into professional territory and a second layer appears. Ingresos brutos is a provincial turnover tax charged by each province and by the City of Buenos Aires on the habitual exercise of a lucrative activity for consideration. Crucially it falls on gross receipts, not profit, so it does not care that you lost last month.
Whether a professional player's winnings count as a taxable activity is contested and varies by jurisdiction. Rates and exemptions differ across provinces, and if you play in more than one, the Convenio Multilateral governs how the base is split. This is exactly where you want a local contador rather than any blog post, ours included.
Filing and deadlines
Income tax for individuals runs on the calendar year. Under RG 5692/2025 you file form F. 711 through ARCA's "Ganancias Personas Humanas, Portal Integrado" service, using a CUIT and a Clave Fiscal at level 2 or above. A simplified return now exists for smaller taxpayers. Read article 3 carefully: the return is due whenever the conditions for taxability are met, even if you never registered. Not signing up is not a defence.
Deadlines normally fall in June, staggered by the last digit of your CUIT, but for fiscal year 2025 they were extended and the ordering dropped: payment fell due on 27 July 2026 and the return on 27 August 2026, for everyone. Those dates moved twice, so confirm the current calendar on ARCA's site. Once registered you will generally also owe five advance instalments.
Records, and why a session log matters
Record keeping is where players get hurt. Under Ley 11.683, article 33, records must be backed by supporting documents, and entries derive their evidentiary value only from the credibility of those documents. Vouchers must be kept for ten years. Article 56 sets how long ARCA can pursue you: five years if registered, ten if not, falling to three under Ley 27.799 of 2 January 2026 for those who filed on time and paid. Filing properly shortens your exposure.
Three provisions explain why this matters.
- Article 18(f): if your wealth grows and you cannot explain the source, ARCA can treat the whole increase as undeclared income, add a further 10 percent for assumed consumption, and assess VAT on the same figure with no input credit.
- Article 18(g): bank deposits exceeding declared income are an independent trigger carrying the same 10 percent uplift. Anyone banking poker cash should read that twice.
- Article 47(d): failing to keep adequate books is itself a statutory indicator of intent to deceive. That is the bridge from an ordinary omission under article 45, a fine of 100 percent of the tax, to fraud under article 46, at 2 to 6 times the tax evaded.
These presumptions are rebuttable, but the burden sits on you. "I won it playing poker" is not a justification. A documented trail is.
So keep evidence as though you might have to prove it, because the person explaining a bank balance will be you. A useful record has, per session: date, venue or site, game and stakes, buy-in, cash-out, and result. Add tournament receipts, casino and site statements, withdrawal records, and for anything won abroad, the currency, date and rate you used.
Reconstructing that from memory years later is close to impossible, which is why logging sessions as you play is worth the effort. Keeping a session-by-session log is what PokerCharts is built to do, and having the history in one place turns a stressful filing exercise into an export.
One last time: this is general information, not tax advice. Poker sits in an under-legislated corner of Argentine tax law, several rules above changed within the last two years, and the recreational versus professional line is a judgement call. Take your situation to a contador.