In the first half of 2025, 25 legally operating casinos in Chile paid a total of 1001.63 billion Chilean pesos (approximately 102.3 million US dollars) in taxes, a 3.5% decrease compared to the same period in 2024. Despite the decline, casinos remain an important source of revenue for the treasury.
According to the classification by the gambling regulatory authority SCJ, these taxes include: a special tax on gambling activities amounting to 433.4 billion pesos (44.3 million US dollars), half of which is used for local government development projects; value-added tax related to gambling totaling 418.31 billion pesos (42.7 million US dollars); and a casino entry tax of 149.94 billion pesos (15.3 million US dollars), which is directly added to the national general fund.
In the first half of 2025, the total gambling revenue (i.e., the amount lost by players) of Chilean casinos was 2822.52 billion pesos (288.4 million US dollars), a decrease of 3.5% year-on-year. The total number of visitors was 3,316,340, a decrease of 3.7% compared to the previous year. However, the average expenditure per visitor was 83,344 pesos (approximately 85 US dollars), an increase of 1.7% from the first half of last year.
Furthermore, the casinos directly contributed 205.97 billion pesos (approximately 21 million US dollars) to municipal finances, which is managed by the treasury and distributed monthly as an economic incentive to give back to local communities.
