Costa Rica News – If you are making money in Costa Rica expect it to be reported to your country of origin and pay taxes. Costa Rica has long has a reputation as a tax haven but the government is working to change that.
If bill number 18,966 is approved, financial institutions would be required to share information.
President Luis Guillermo Solís requested a few small changes and they were all approved yesterday.
Costa Rica was moved from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s blacklist to the grey list of tax havens in 2011 and is working to become even better.
The initiative is to take out the requirement to get approval from a judge when a foreign tax administration requires account information from a domestic financial institution.
This could include banks and other institutions with financial customer data.
The permission would be granted exclusively to governments who signed agreements with Costa Rica to exchange tax information. Currently this includes 13 countries.
Agreements are in the works with Ecuador and South Africa.
