Costa Rica’s government enforces even more it’s systems of auditing through national public institutions and international organizations. After approving the Regulation of the Transparency and Final Beneficiaries Registry in 2019, all Costa Rican companies must make the declaration that this instrument gives rise to, which seeks that all companies in the country declare their shareholder composition on an online platform until they reach a final beneficiary. The foregoing demonstrates that the government is reinforcing and supervising in a detailed manner the actions of people who seek to act through societies. Additionally, a directive was approved that obliges inactive companies to declare their assets as of this year and with a final term in May 2020.
On Wednesday, January 8, 2020, the government raised its voice again through the Ministry of Taxes, announcing the decision in which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) approved that the countries institutions have access to the tax information of its taxpayers. As it has been known before, Costa Rica is in the process of joining this organization and therefore, it forces the country to meet certain requirements for its long-awaited income.
From now on, this ministry will have access to both financial and fiscal information of Costa Ricans who have bank accounts abroad and tax data of multinationals with branches in the national territory. This approval was given thanks to a periodic evaluation carried out, to the ability to safeguard and confidentiality of the information by the Tax Administration, for which the Ministry of Taxes has a committee in charge of this issue.
The Executive seeks to strengthen the process of fighting tax evasion and an improvement of data storage security increase, taking this step through the expected entry of Costa Rica to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) this 2020.
