The Costa Rican National Registry has just issued a directive mandating the payment of any outstanding corporation taxes for the period 2012-2015 before it will record documents for corporations that are not up to date in the tax payment. Costa Rica had imposed an annual corporation tax on all corporations. See our article on the corporation tax. The obligation to pay that tax started in 2012. In January of 2015 the Costa Rica Supreme Court ruled that certain articles of the corporation tax law were unconsitutional. (Ruling 2015-001241). In its ruling the Constitutional Court ruled that the declaration of unconstitutionality of the corporation tax would start with the fiscal period of 2016. With this ruling the Constitution Court validated the tax for the period 2012-2015. This means that owners of corporations remain liable for the corporation tax for the periods 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.
As such, the National Registry of Costa Rica which is the national document recording office has just issued a directive to the recording officers that any doucment which is presented to either the tangible property (Registro Inmobiliario) or intangible property registry (Registro Muebles) that does not have the corporation tax paid will have the document cancelled. For example if your corporation owns real estate and you sell that property to a third party and present the deed for recording in the National Registry they will verify that your corporation has paid the past due corporation tax. If it has not then the deed transferring the real estate will not be recorded – until the tax is paid. The National Registry is giving a 3 month grace period for any deeds that have been filed already but have not paid the past due corporation tax.
The full text of the directive from the National Registry is set forth below in it’s original format in Spanish.
