by Patricia Leiton for La Nación on the 8th of December 2010.

Source: La Nacion

The Financial Affairs Committee on Thursday approved, unanimously, the annual tax of $ 200 (about ¢ 101,000, currently) to joint stock companies registered in the Property Registry.

The project, called "Tax on Legal Entities" - entered the Legislative Assembly in August 2006 and the amount collected will go to the Ministry of Public Security.

The initial proposal of the Ministry of Finance established a tax of $ 200, then increased to $ 300, and yesterday went back down to $ 200. The text of this tax exempts small businesses registered with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

It also establishes the National Register will be responsible for collecting the assesment. This is the second project which dictates that commission tax in less than a month.

Implications.

The former Director of Taxation, Alan Saborio said that corporations are designed to bring  capital capital, but in Costa Rica "the figure of the corporation has somehow been distorted." In our country, he said, these companies have been used to buy houses and cars so that property can be passed through the transfer of shares without paying taxes. Saborio said that the charge has two advantages: it is easy collection and also will streamline the number of companies.

Similar opinions were expressed by Deputy Guillermo Zúñiga, president of the Committee on Financial Affairs and former Minister of Finance. "I think that this tax not only will help to clean the registry of companies, thus combating circumvention, but also contribute to the country so it can, with fresh resources, be given the task of dealing with more resources the serious problems of insecurity that afflict us, "said the legislator in a statement released by his office.
 

Estimated revenue.

According to that statement, it is estimated that the tax will about $ 100 million a year (currently, ¢ 50,500 million) for the Ministry of Public Security.

"In response signed by the Ministry of Finance to the President of Treasury Commission, the tax was set at $ 200 and exemptions approved, is expected to raise about $ 100.3 million annually," says the document. This amount represents almost a third of the resources that are budgeted by the Ministry of Public Security for the year 2011, for a total of about ¢ 158,000 million.

Yesterday we tried to speak with Zúñiga or some authority at the Ministry of Finance on the possibility that the amount raised by this tax really reaches those safety programs.

Taxes with special purpose taxes in Costa Rica have had difficulties to reach its destiny for which the laws have allocated them.

One example is the case of the solidarity tax, whose money, two years after its creation in November 2008, has not yet reached the beneficiaries.

Click here to read the article in Spanish.