Selling into Chile Without a Local Entity

If the plan needs people, offices, imports or local invoicing instead, that is the physical-entry track: it starts at the doing-business guide and the entity guide.

1. Registration is online and light

   You register through the SII’s digital VAT portal: verify an email address, complete a form, receive a user number. The regime asks for no local entity, no Chilean tax ID under the general rules and no representative in Chile, and the SII’s instructions (Circular 42 of 2020) state that registering does not create a permanent establishment.

2. Charge 19% on covered sales

   The provider adds VAT at the general 19% rate to services (and, since October 2025, covered goods) sold to Chilean customers who are not VAT taxpayers. The statute sets no minimum-sales threshold: the duty runs from the first covered sale.

3. File monthly or quarterly, your choice

   The tax period is one or three months, at the taxpayer’s election. The return is filed and paid electronically by day 20 of the month after the period closes, and the portal accepts payment in US dollars, euros or Chilean pesos.

4. No credit, no Chilean invoices

   Providers in the regime have no right to VAT credit and are released from issuing Chilean tax documents. If recovering input VAT matters to your economics, the general regime, with its full formalities, remains available as an option.

5. Sales to Chilean VAT taxpayers fall outside the regime

   When the buyer is a VAT-registered Chilean business, the law reverses the charge: the customer becomes the liable party, issues a purchase invoice for the operation and declares the 19% itself. A purely B2B seller may have nothing to register; a mixed seller registers for the consumer side.

6. Know when a sale counts as Chilean

   For remote services the law presumes use in Chile when at least two of four indicators concur: a Chilean IP address or geolocation, a payment method issued or registered in Chile, a Chilean billing address, or a Chilean mobile SIM. Build your tax-determination logic around those signals.

1. A statutory lever

   Article 3 of DL 825 empowers the SII to order, by resolution, that issuers of credit, debit and prepaid cards and analogous payment systems surcharge, withhold, declare and pay the VAT on operations of non-resident providers that have not joined the simplified regime.

2. The 2022 switch-on

   Resolution 46 of 2022 made the change of taxpayer effective: from August 1, 2022, bank and non-bank card issuers withhold 19% on payments to the foreign providers the SII lists as non-compliant.

3. A list refreshed every December

   The SII publishes the withholding list each December 15 and it governs the following calendar year, with additions and removals during the year. Resolution 181 of December 15, 2025 fixed the list now in force, which runs from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

4. What it means at checkout

   When a Chilean cardholder who is not a VAT taxpayer pays a listed provider, the issuer adds the 19% on top of the price. In practice the choice is simple: register and manage the tax yourself, or the payment rails collect it for you, with no credit, no control over pricing and your name on a public non-compliance list.

• A local sales force. Employees or contractors in Chile who negotiate and habitually close deals look like a taxable presence, whatever the contract says about where the servers sit.
• Dependent agents. A distributor is fine; an agent who acts on your instructions and concludes contracts in your name is not. Dependence, not the label, drives the analysis.
• Long on-the-ground services. Implementation teams, consultants or support engineers who spend extended periods in Chile on a project can tip a remote seller into taxable presence, with thresholds that vary by tax treaty.

The permanent-establishment mechanics, the 35% Additional Tax and treaty relief live in the tax guide for foreign parents.

• You want employees in Chile. Labor law does not stretch around a foreign employer with no local presence for long; hiring is the classic trigger. The hiring guide compares an EOR against your own entity.
• Enterprise clients demand local paper. Large Chilean buyers often require peso invoices, local contracts and a local counterparty for procurement. A subsidiary answers all three.
• Input VAT starts to matter. The simplified regime gives no credit. When Chilean costs grow, the general regime through a local entity can recover 19% that the pay-only track leaves behind.
• The operation stops being remote. Ongoing local projects, inventory in Chile or a country manager blur the permanent-establishment line; incorporating puts the tax analysis back on solid ground. Start with the entity guide.