Miércoles – The Tax Administration defines aggressive audit plan emphasizing in professional services

The Taxation General Direction (DGT) defined its audit plans for this year, including as priority sectors the financial, real estate, private education and construction-related professionals (such as engineers, architects and lawyers), as well as esthetic surgery doctors and dentists.

Specifically in the real estate field, the Tax Administration will intensely examine the tax situation of several real estate companies and investors, who are evading taxes payment through the use of corporations at the province of Guanacaste. This way, the Tax Administration pretends to identify at least 5 professionals of renowned prestige in the country, with the aim of submit them to intense audits and apply them greater verification methods than the usual ones.

Likewise, entities within the free trade zone regime using transfer prices to lower their tax burdens in CR will be under the Tax Administration’s watch, as well as taxpayers who constantly file surplus-balance returns. The Tax Administration director explained that they will use plans to massively detect defaults trough shade declarations when crossing tax information.

Viernes – Free Trade Zone Regime keeps growing in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica, the free trade zone (FTZ) regime grants significant tax exemptions (for example income tax, value-added tax or real estate exemptions) to companies that are mainly engaged in export of services and/or products. Amongst others, manufacturing, service companies and companies dedicated to research and development could fall within the scope of companies that would qualify to operate in this especial tax incentive system.
New FTZ parks have been recently opened in Costa Rica since the number of companies operating under this regime has been growing substantially. According to the Minister of Foreign Trade, Marco Vinicio Ruiz, the new FTZ parks would satisfy the demand of space of either new companies or companies that are already operating under the FTZ regime, but are in the need to expand their operations.

Either national or international companies could apply for FTZ status; nonetheless, there are mainly international companies installed in the FTZ parks available.