Peru’s JNE certifies signatures for casino and betting operators to challenge the ISC before the Constitutional Court

Peru’s National Jury of Elections (JNE) has certified the 5,000 signatures needed for sports betting and remote gaming operators to file an acción de inconstitucionalidad against the application of the Selective Consumption Tax (ISC) under Legislative Decree No. 1644. For payment providers and merchants in the space, this is not just a legal skirmish: it is a direct challenge to the tax stack attached to regulated betting in Peru.

1. The JNE resolution confirms the signatures required for operators to bring the constitutional challenge before Peru’s Constitutional Court. The target is the ISC imposed under Legislative Decree No. 1644, issued during the government of Dina Boluarte.
2. According to constitutional and tax law analyses cited in the source, the decree has been questioned because the tax allegedly lacks essential elements and is therefore described by those reports as illegal and unconstitutional. The operators are now using that argument to push for review at the constitutional level.
3. The source says Bill No. 9645/2024-CR aims to correct those observations and provide greater legal certainty for the regulatory framework. If the Congress does not approve the insistence in plenary this Tuesday, a constitutional review of the rule could begin.
4. Peru has already seen this movie before. Under Constitutional Court ruling No. 009-2001-AI/TC, certain tax provisions applied to casino games and slot machines were declared unconstitutional, which later led to recalculations, offsets, and refunds of amounts collected under that regime.
5. At present, sports betting and remote gaming in Peru pay 12% as the Impuesto al Juego, plus an ISC of 1% applied to the amount wagered. Specialized analyses cited in the text say the effective tax burden can rise much higher than the nominal rate, reaching close to 50% of gross gaming revenue in certain scenarios.

The business impact is already visible. Between 2025 and 2026, 40 betting operators left the Peruvian market and 1,500 points of sale were closed, according to official sector information. Sports sponsorships tied to betting companies also fell from presence in 18 professional football clubs in 2024 to only five in 2026.

For high-risk PSPs, the practical question is simple: Peru is testing how far a licensed betting framework can absorb layered taxation before operators start retreating, reallocating sponsorship spend, or pushing traffic toward unregulated platforms outside the Peruvian regime.