A Costa Rica Blog  

Earlier I sent an email message to the PR person at the Ministry of Finance. While they didn’t answer my questions, other than to extend an invitation to the breakfast-with-the-press meeting, they did add me to their email distribution list. Since then I’ve been receiving press releases that are mostly not interesting. However, today I [...]

An article published online today in La Nacion briefly discusses some problems people are facing when attempting to pay the Solidarity tax. The article also provides the account number at Banco Costa Rica to which tax payments can be made via transfer or wire.
A second article published today indicates that, of the anticipated ten [...]

Looks like it’s now possible to pay the Solidarity Tax either using international wire transfer, or make payments locally, directly to a Hacienda account. A new document available describes the process. It does not mention registering / declaring a value on Hacienda’s web site, and checking this just now shows that Extranjero cedula numbers [...]

I have lived for over 16 years full time in Costa Rica with 15 years of permanent residency. I understand how things work here and also how things don’t work here. Laws are written by politicians with good intent but with very little understanding of how difficult or impossible it is to comply with them. [...]

After further clarifications from Hacienda today I prepared this for additional clarification. Land value is part of the calculation only if there is construction on top of it, this means, if you own a lot in a luxury resort the lot will not pay the new tax until you build a luxury home on [...]

This month we are beginning to see some details regarding the long-awaited Luxury Tax. Since the new law went into effect on Oct. 1, there has been a lot of confusion around the specific details. This article includes information about calculating your tax liability and registering your property value—all of it online.