Although Airbnb offered to collect the sales tax for transactions made in Costa Rica through its platform, the Treasury is evaluating asking the US for information on the hosts.
The Directorate General for Taxation will try to exhaust all routes first with the company Airbnb, but as a second alternative, it has announced that if it does not reach an agreement with Airbnb, it could request information on the hosts, making use of international agreements for exchange of information with other governments, such as as the US.
If the Treasury's proposal succeeds, interest on bank deposits would incur 8% to 15%, while for revenues generated by mutual funds, the tax would rise from 5% to 15%.
This unification is due to the fact that currently there are different taxes for similar types of income, therefore the tax is not neutral, according to the CEO of Taxation. In the case of surplus cooperatives and solidarity associations, the project proposes "...
New guidelines from the Costa Rican Treasury Office will allow greater access to the most relevant data of companies who paid more than $500,000 in taxes in the past three years.
Large taxpayers now have the obligation to submit to the Directorate General of Taxation information on their financial status in unconsolidated digital format.
This measure is intended to increase oversight of the most important data of 500 companies which account for about 70% of the country's tax revenue. The Treasury defines major contributors to the company as those who paid more than $500,000 for taxes in the last three fiscal years.
Although there are countries in Latin American where paying taxes is an even more cumbersome task, the country needs to improve both the rules and the operation of the tax collection system.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), the country is located at No. 125 in the world rankings on how easy, or difficult, it is to pay taxes.
PWC data reveals that a company uses up an average of 226 hours per year in meeting its obligations and ensuring the payment of all taxes. In Central America, the country has the second best place, in contrast to Guatemala which occupies position 124.
A drop in the collection of sales tax revenue by customs offices and of the internal sales tax confirms a drop in consumption by households and firms.
The decline in imports during the last year, caused a drop in sales tax revenue in customs, which in February, had a real decrease of 1.39% compared to the growth of 18.3% in the same period in 2012, according to calculations made by La Nacion using data supplied by the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank.