Dissolution of the Corporation For Non-Payment of Annual Tax
If your Costa Rica corporation has accumulated 3 past due payments of the annual corporation tax you should understand what can happen.
The Corporation Tax Law provides that any corporation that has not paid the tax for 3 consecutive periods would be dissolved administratively. The payment that was due January 31, 2014 is the 3rd payment due since the tax law was passed. This means that corporations that had not paid any tax would become delinquent and subject to dissolution on February 1, 2014.
However, don’t panic yet. It did not happend. The Costa Rican constitutional court held that portions of the Corporation Tax Law were unconstitutional. As such the Tax Department is working on revised text to correct the errors pointed out by the Constitutional Court. This Corporation Tax law has created a lot of confusion even among the legal and accounting profession.
It is my understanding based upon information provided by the National Registry that they do not intend to automatically dissolve the corporations. At this point everybody is just waiting to see when the Tax Department will release a revised corporation tax law and then determine what procedures for dissolution are contemplated.
