The corporation tax lives once again ! Three years ago Costa Rica passed an annual corporation tax of $200 a year for inactive companies and $400 a year for active companies.
The legality of the tax had been challenged and the Constitutional Court struck certain provisions of the law down but NOT retroactively. That meant that if you had already paid the tax you would not get reimbursed. It also meant that if you still needed to do filings in the National Registry or obtain a certificate of standing you had to pay the amounts past due for 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The court indicated that the corporate tax could not be charged starting in 2016. Of course this was a “window” to allow the government to correct the constitutional errors in the law.
As such it is no surprise that the NEW and improved Law for the Creation of a Corporation Tax was presented to the legislature as Bill number 19.505. The Bill presented is identical to the original law (Law 9024) but this time around it does address the concerns voiced by the Constitutional Court to correct the deficiencies in the original law. This bill has just been presented to Congress for review so we shall see how it proceeds through the legislative process.
