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Do you know where and how to pay the Costa Rica corporation tax, or “Impuesto a las Personas Jurídicas“? The Costa Rica corporation tax was approved in January 2012 and went into effect on April 1st, 2012.
Many foreign buyers own property in a corporation, which is a practice that is not used as much as before. The tax should be paid when the company is active or inactive. Therefore, you must pay the annual corporation tax if you own property in a corporation.
All commercial companies, any branch of a foreign company or its representative, and individual limited liability companies registered in the Register of Legal Entities of the National Registry must pay this tax. The fiscal period runs from January 1st to December 31st of the same year.
How to pay the Costa Rica corporation tax
Go on January 31st or before, to any of the 226 BCR offices anywhere in the country or go to their website and pay it there.
- Apply for Corporate Income Tax Payment
- Enter Internet Banking from your computer.
- You will be able to make the payment of the Corporate Income Tax through the Virtual Office in the option “Payment of Services” in the “Ministry of Finance” icon.
Those who live out of the country and don’t have a BCR account will need someone in Costa Rica to pay the Costa Rica corporation tax for them.
Have you paid your mandatory corporation tax every year? Did you get your mandatory digital signature yet? Did you register the shareholders with the government? If your answer is NO and you don’t know how to resolve this, click on the banner below. We have the solution, at a very affordable cost.
Which data do you need to be able to pay
To pay the corporation tax, the only data you have to provide is the legal identification number of the corporation you want to pay the tax for. For those who don’t know what the corporate ID looks like, generally, it is as in 3-101-XXXXXX.
You have several corporations
Many of you own different properties in Costa Rica and have each one in a different corporation and maybe a different corporation for each car. You could transfer the properties to your own name, but that’s expensive. To make a correct decision, contact your attorney and ask him/her for counsel.
Education and Culture tax stamp
Now, while we’re talking about taxes, most of you don’t know that when you have a corporation, you also need to pay a yearly tax stamp, called “Timbre de Educación y Cultura”. I guess your attorney forgot to tell you when they sold or constituted the corporation. The Timbre de Educación y Cultura is generally due by March 31. Many people do not even know it exists and they don’t pay it.
However, it is a tax obligation, and it would be prudent to pay the tax – you can pay the Costa Rica corporation tax later i.e. past the deadline and just pay a small interest penalty. Generally, the amount is between 750 to 6,000 Colones depending on the capital stock of the company.
The Luxury Home tax
I also want to remind those who own a luxury home in Costa Rica will have to pay the Luxury Home Tax or “Impuesto Solidario“. Properties in Costa Rica with the construction of a lower value than ¢371,000,000 (about $175,000) are exempt from paying the fee of 0.25% over your appraised value for 2023. There is no obligation to file the Luxury home tax if you are under that value. If your property is borderline, we recommend filing. No matter if you have a luxury beach home or a home on the golf course, you have to file before the 1st of January every year. Download this year’s PDF now.
If you don’t file and they catch you, you will be charged 10 times the tax you should have paid and if you file the wrong values, they will charge you 5 times the tax. We have a great 44-page E-Book by real estate attorney Roger Petersen about the Luxury home tax that you can buy on our website.
Still cheap
If you have read all the above, you might ask yourself how many taxes you will have to pay. But most of the above add up very little as the percentages are very low. If you add it all up, you’ll find that all these taxes are maybe 1/10th of what most of you used to pay back home.
Check on this article about Costa Rica taxes, it explains a bit more about the taxes we all pay or not pay in Costa Rica. Contact us now for expert advice on buying or selling your home in Costa Rica.
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