Costa Rica Gambling Licence Requirements (2026): Checklist

Contents

Is there a gambling licence in Costa Rica? The requirements checklist at a glance 1. A Costa Rican company: S.A. or SRL 2. The municipal patente and the “data-processing” framing 3. Tax registration through TRIBU-CR 4. The Law 9050 betting-data tax: the requirement most guides skip 5. Beneficial-ownership filing in the RTBF 6. Exclude Costa Rican residents and geo-block 7. AML/KYC, player protection and policies 8. Banking reality Is Costa Rica about to regulate online gambling? Where the Costa Rica checklist fits

Costa Rica issues no gambling licence, so the “requirements” are a company, a municipal permit, tax and beneficial-ownership filings, a betting-data tax under Law 9050, and strict exclusion of Costa Rican residents. The statute to know is Law 9050 of 2012. It taxes companies that “receive and process data that generate electronic bets” at 57 to 113 base salaries a year — ₡26.3 million (≈ US$58,000) at the lowest band in 2026. Whether it applies depends on what your Costa Rican company actually does in Costa Rica, which is why we assess it case by case.

Across 300+ operators we’ve taken through licensing end to end, Costa Rica comes up in two ways. Some use it as a cheap standalone base, but more often it is the applicant company behind an offshore licence. Either way the list of obligations is the same, and it has changed since most guides were written. The resident agent is gone, Hacienda’s ATV portal has been replaced by TRIBU-CR, beneficial-ownership filings now fall due every April, and two bills to overhaul gambling law have been tabled since 2025. This checklist reflects the rules as of September 2026.

Is there a gambling licence in Costa Rica?

Not one that an online operator can apply for. Costa Rican gambling law is split between two authorities, and neither of them licenses offshore online gaming:

• The Junta de Protección Social (JPS) has exclusive authority over lotteries, betting and every other game of chance except casinos, under Laws 7395 and 8718. It runs the national lotteries and has publicly declared private betting sites aimed at Costa Ricans illegal.
• The Ministry of Public Security authorises land-based casinos, which Law 9050 confines to hotels rated four stars or higher. A casino can take up no more than 15% of the hotel’s floor area.

Offshore operators work in the gap between those two. Their Costa Rican company holds a municipal business licence for a data-processing activity and serves players outside the country. Costa Rican law neither licenses nor prohibits that model outright, but it does recognise it for tax purposes, which is covered below. What it will never do is authorise you to take bets from Costa Rican residents. The JPS has argued publicly that Law 9050 and a municipal licence give no such right.

When a provider sells you a “Costa Rica gambling license”, what they are really selling is this bundle of company, permit and filings. For the full picture of the route, see our complete guide to the Costa Rica structure.

The requirements checklist at a glance

1. A Costa Rican company: S.A. or SRL

The operating vehicle is a Costa Rican sociedad anónima (S.A.) or sociedad de responsabilidad limitada (SRL), registered with the Registro Nacional. In our practice the S.A. is the default, because banks, PSPs and offshore regulators recognise a board-and-shares structure more readily than an SRL’s quota model. The company’s registered purpose should cover data processing and related technology services. It must not describe the business as offering gambling to the public.

Two points have changed since older guides were written:

• No resident agent. Until late 2024, a company whose legal representatives lived abroad had to appoint a Costa Rican lawyer as resident agent. A reform in force since 3 December 2024 abolished that role. Every company now registers an email address for judicial and administrative notifications and keeps a valid physical address in Costa Rica. A notice sent to that inbox counts as served, so it needs someone monitoring it.
• Clean, documented ownership. The Registro Nacional, your bank and the RTBF (requirement 6) will all ask who owns and controls the company. Nominee arrangements that hide the real owner do not survive that scrutiny.

This same company does double duty. For Anjouan, Tobique, Kahnawake, KUNAISA and Tuvalu, the licence applicant we set up is a Costa Rican company, so the entity you build here is also your applicant for an offshore licence later. Our step-by-step company setup guide covers the incorporation mechanics.

2. The municipal patente and the “data-processing” framing

The permit people call a “data-processing licence” is the municipal business licence, or patente, that the canton where the company operates issues for its commercial activity. Law 9050, article 6, expressly keeps municipalities’ power to grant permits and licences to companies that receive and process electronic-bet data. That is the statutory basis for the patente.

Two practical notes:

• The patente is local, not national. Fees, documents and processing times vary by canton, and the municipality charges a recurring patente tax, usually calculated on declared income. Budget for it as a recurring cost.
• Onshore servers add a layer. If you host or staff operations in Costa Rica, you need the right premises permits and occupational-risk insurance for employees. Most of our clients host abroad, which keeps the Costa Rican footprint small. That choice also matters for the Law 9050 question in requirement 5.

The permit’s scope and limits are covered in detail in our explainer on how the Costa Rica data-processing permit works.

3. Tax registration through TRIBU-CR

Every Costa Rican company registers with the Ministerio de Hacienda and files through its tax platform. That platform changed in 2025. TRIBU-CR went live on 6 October 2025, replacing ATV (Administración Tributaria Virtual) and TRAVI. It was originally due on 4 August and was delayed by a court injunction. Registrations, returns, payments and tax-status certificates all run through TRIBU-CR now, so ignore any guide that still tells you to “register in ATV”.

The main taxes:

• Corporate income tax is 30% at the standard rate, with reduced progressive rates for small companies below a gross-income threshold. Costa Rica taxes on a territorial basis: only Costa Rican-source income is taxable. Revenue from foreign players is not automatically foreign-source, though. What counts is where the income-generating activity takes place: staff, servers, management. A 2023 reform also taxes some foreign-source passive income (dividends, interest, royalties) of group entities that lack economic substance in Costa Rica.
• The legal-entity tax (Law 9428) is due by 31 January every year, whether or not the company trades. In 2026 it is 15% of a base salary for inactive companies (₡69,330). For active companies it is 25%, 30% or 50% (₡115,550, ₡138,660 or ₡231,100), depending on gross income. Arrears accrue interest and penalties, and a company with unpaid tax will struggle to produce the good-standing documents banks and offshore regulators ask for.
• VAT, payroll and withholding apply if you invoice locally, employ staff or pay Costa Rican suppliers.

4. The Law 9050 betting-data tax: the requirement most guides skip

Law 9050 of 2012 is titled a tax on casinos and “electronic-bet call-linking companies”. Its article 4 applies to “companies dedicated to the reception and processing of data that generate electronic bets”. That is the data-processing model, named in statute. The tax is annual and set by the number of people working for the company as direct employees:

The base salary is the Poder Judicial figure, held at ₡462,200 for 2026. The dollar amounts use ≈ ₡455 per dollar, the midpoint of the Ministerio de Hacienda reference rates for 29 September 2026 (₡452.68 buying, ₡457.21 selling). The implementing regulation, Decree 39231-MSP-MH, adds the mechanics:

• The taxable event is simply being a company that provides these services, and headcount follows the “contract reality” test. People working under your direction count even if they are not reported to the CCSS social-security fund.
• The tax year runs January to December. You pay advances equal to 75% of the estimate in three instalments (June, September and December), file a sworn return within 15 days of year-end listing the employees, and pay the balance within two months and 15 days.
• The tax is not deductible for income-tax purposes (Law 9050, art. 11).
• Liable companies must register for this tax with Hacienda. The tax authority can register you on its own initiative, with penalties, if it finds you doing the activity unregistered.

Our reading: the lowest band is written as “up to 50 employees”, with no floor. A company that actually receives and processes bet data in Costa Rica therefore owes at least 57 base salaries, even with a small team. Whether a Costa Rican company whose servers, staff and management all sit abroad falls within article 4 is a fact-specific question. Get a written opinion from Costa Rican tax counsel before you file your first return, because Hacienda can register an unregistered company on its own initiative and add penalties. A company that runs a local betting-data operation should plan for the tax; one that only holds an offshore licence with no staff, servers or management in the country is a different fact pattern, and that is exactly what the written opinion should address.

5. Beneficial-ownership filing in the RTBF

Law 9416 created the Registro de Transparencia y Beneficiarios Finales (RTBF). The Central Bank (BCCR) runs it through its Central Directo platform, and Hacienda and the ICD (the drug-control institute, home of the financial intelligence unit) consume the data. Every company files its shareholding and its ultimate beneficial owners: the natural persons who own or control it, directly or indirectly.

• Since 2025 the ordinary filing window has been 1–30 April each year.
• The filer needs a Costa Rican digital signature (firma digital). Foreign owners usually file through a local representative who has one.
• Missing or late filings carry sanctions under Law 9416, and an out-of-date RTBF entry is one of the first things a bank’s compliance team checks.

Treat the RTBF, your bank’s UBO file and your offshore regulator’s ownership disclosures as one dataset. When they disagree, compliance teams start asking questions.

6. Exclude Costa Rican residents and geo-block

This is the requirement that keeps the structure legal. Domestic games of chance are a JPS monopoly, and the JPS has declared private betting sites aimed at Costa Ricans illegal. A Costa Rican operator therefore has to exclude residents in two ways: technically, through IP geo-blocking, and at KYC, by refusing Costa Rican addresses and ID documents.

In practice the block list also covers markets your structure is not licensed for: the United States, the United Kingdom, regulated EU markets, plus sanctioned and FATF-listed jurisdictions. With no regulator watching, the discipline has to come from inside the business. That is why we treat the block list as a live compliance control with an owner and a review date.

7. AML/KYC, player protection and policies

No Costa Rican regulator reviews your AML programme, but every bank, PSP and platform provider will. You need at least:

• a written AML/KYC policy covering customer identification, source-of-funds triggers, transaction monitoring and sanctions screening;
• responsible-gaming tools: deposit limits, self-exclusion and age verification;
• terms and conditions, a privacy notice and a responsible-gaming page that match what the product actually does.

Thin paperwork is the most common reason a payment relationship stalls. For what a working programme looks like beyond the policy PDF, see our iGaming AML and KYC primer.

8. Banking reality

Costa Rican banks rarely onboard gambling-adjacent companies, and mainstream consumer fintechs prohibit gambling outright. In practice the Costa Rica company banks through an EMI or neobank that accepts high-risk gaming clients. Where a gambling payment agent is needed, we incorporate it in Cyprus. Expect the EMI to ask for everything above: corporate documents, RTBF extract, tax-status certificate, AML policy and, above all, a licence it can verify. Our guide to opening a bank account for a gaming company walks through the onboarding file.

Is Costa Rica about to regulate online gambling?

It is being debated, but nothing has passed. Here is the status as of September 2026:

• Bill 25.057, a JPS-backed proposal presented in mid-2025, would have modernised the gambling framework and strengthened JPS enforcement against unauthorised operators. On 23 January 2026 the Security and Narcotics Committee voted it down 5–3, and it went to the plenary with a negative report. The plenary can revive it by motion; we have found no record that it has.
• Bill 25.600, filed in May 2026 by Esmeralda Britton, a former JPS president, and three co-signers, is the successor. It would make the JPS both an operator and the sole regulator of the entire gambling sector, adding real-time monitoring, software audits and closer coordination with the financial intelligence unit, the ICD and CONASSIF, the financial-system supervisory council. The bill’s own text says unlicensed platforms hold about 53% of the domestic lottery-and-betting market. It is at an early stage in the new 2026–2030 Assembly.

Neither bill creates a licence for offshore operators serving foreign players. If a version of 25.600 passes, the likely effect is tighter enforcement against anyone touching the domestic market, plus more scrutiny of Costa Rican companies in the betting-data business. That is another reason to get the Law 9050 position and the resident exclusion right now. We will update this page as either bill moves.

Where the Costa Rica checklist fits

As a standalone structure, Costa Rica suits a market test or a cost-sensitive launch into markets that do not ask for a licence. Budget for the patente, the legal-entity tax, accounting and, if your model brings it into scope, Law 9050. We break down the numbers in our Costa Rica set-up cost breakdown. If you are choosing between routes, the Costa Rica vs Curaçao comparison sets the trade-offs side by side.

Most of our clients end up using Costa Rica as the corporate base and adding an offshore licence for the credential. To see which licence fits your markets, try the licence finder. When you are ready to launch, the Costa Rica launch checklist sequences the permit, policies and payments so nothing blocks day one.

We set up the Costa Rica company, patente and filings, assess the Law 9050 position with local tax counsel, and tell you plainly when an offshore licence on top is worth the spend. See how our Costa Rica gambling licence service works, or book a free consultation to map these requirements to your target markets.

Frequently asked questions

What are the requirements for a Costa Rica gambling licence?

There is no gambling licence to qualify for — Costa Rica issues none to offshore operators. The real requirements are: a Costa Rican S.A. or SRL, a municipal business licence (patente) for a data-processing activity, tax registration with Hacienda through TRIBU-CR, the annual legal-entity tax, a beneficial-ownership filing in the RTBF every April, assessment of the Ley 9050 betting-data tax, hard exclusion of Costa Rican residents, and an AML/KYC programme your banks will accept.

Is online gambling legal in Costa Rica?

Not for residents, outside the state channel. The Junta de Protección Social (JPS) holds exclusive authority over games of chance other than hotel casinos under Laws 7395 and 8718, and it has publicly declared private online betting aimed at Costa Ricans illegal. A Costa Rican company serving players abroad is a different matter: Costa Rican law does not license it, but Law 9050 taxes companies that receive and process electronic-bet data.

Do Costa Rica gaming companies pay tax?

It can. Beyond the 30% corporate income tax on Costa Rican-source income and the annual legal-entity tax (₡69,330–₡231,100 in 2026), Law 9050 charges companies that receive and process electronic-bet data an annual tax of 57, 85 or 113 base salaries by headcount — ₡26,345,400 (≈ US$58,000) at the lowest band in 2026, not deductible for income tax. Whether it reaches a company whose platform, staff and servers all sit outside Costa Rica is a fact-specific question to settle with Costa Rican tax counsel before launch.

Do I still need a resident agent in Costa Rica?

No. The resident-agent requirement for companies whose legal representatives live abroad was abolished by a reform in force since 3 December 2024. It was replaced by a mandatory company email address registered with the Registro Nacional for official notifications, plus a valid physical address in Costa Rica. Most foreign owners still keep a local lawyer for filings — but it is no longer a legal requirement.

Is Costa Rica going to regulate online casinos?

Not yet. Bill 25.057, a JPS-backed reform, was voted down in the Security and Narcotics Committee in January 2026 and sent to the plenary with a negative report. A successor, bill 25.600, was filed in May 2026 to make the JPS the sole regulator of the whole gambling sector. As of September 2026 neither is law, and neither creates a licence for offshore operators.

Is a Costa Rica company enough, or do I need a real licence?

For a market test, the Costa Rica structure alone can work. For most payment providers, affiliate networks and B2B suppliers, it is not enough — they want a licence they can verify. The usual answer is to keep the Costa Rica company and use it as the applicant for an offshore licence such as Anjouan, Tobique, Kahnawake, KUNAISA or Tuvalu.

Sources

• Ley N.º 9050 — Impuesto a Casinos y Empresas de Enlace de Llamadas de Apuestas Electrónicas (SCIJ)
• Decreto 39231-MSP-MH — Reglamento a la Ley 9050 (ICT)
• Ministerio de Hacienda — Registro de Transparencia y Beneficiarios Finales (Ley 9416), 2025
• Poder Judicial — salario base for 2026 set at ₡462,200
• Banco Central de Costa Rica — US dollar reference rate series (₡452.68 buy / ₡457.21 sell on 29 September 2026)
• PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — Costa Rica corporate income tax
• Yogonet — Costa Rica committee rejects JPS gambling bill 25.057 (Jan 2026)

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This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before acting.