Costa Rica · Tax regime
Costa Rican Territorial Tax System
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Territorial under Ley 7092 art. 1. Costa Rica was fully removed from the EU's lists on 18 February 2025. Note that many tax-firm posts date this to February 2024, which is wrong.
Costa Rica taxes on a territorial basis and is currently off the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions. Panama sat on the EU blacklist (Annex I) from February 2020 until it moved to Annex II on 9 October 2026. Costa Rica itself was blacklisted in February 2023, then moved to Annex II and was removed from the list on 18 February 2025. For a family that wants a territorial base and clean EU banking, that current record is the whole argument.
Qualifying routes
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Tax residency
generally more than 183 days in a tax year
The facts
- Total landed cost
- no direct cost. CCSS affiliation is the recurring charge.
- Route type
- Tax regime, not a visa
- Timeline
- 1–6 months (getting a residency certificate requires substantiation)
- Physical presence
- 183+ days
- Family
- Individual
- Permanent residency
- Not applicable
- Citizenship
- Not applicable
- Language test
- Not applicable
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- 183+ days of presencetax registration and CCSS affiliationa genuine foreign-source characterisation of income
What can go wrong
- Ley 10.381 imposes 15% on the foreign passive income of non-qualified entities inside multinational groups. Under Art. 2 quater, the rule applies only when two or more legal entities are involved, so individuals are not caught. But if your foreign income runs through a Costa Rican company that sits inside a group structure, model this carefully.
- The impuesto solidario on luxury homes above roughly CRC 143 million is not technically a wealth tax, but it works like one for a family buying a trophy property.
- CCSS affiliation is compulsory for residents. In practice it is assessed on declared worldwide income, an odd fit for a territorial tax system, and it catches people by surprise.
- Territoriality is narrower in practice than in theory. Income earned through your own labour while you are physically in Costa Rica counts as Costa Rican-source, regardless of who pays it or where.
- Costa Rica has been a CRS participant since 2018.