The Law of “Temporary Relief for Ocean Freight Costs for national imports, to mitigate the container crisis”, came into force as of March 30^th, 2022.

The law aims to provide a temporary adjustment of the taxable base of goods imported by sea for customs purposes. For determining the taxable base of import duties and taxes on imports, taxpayers that import goods by maritime transport to Costa Rica, in containers or as general cargo, declared from port to port, as well as international cargo consolidators, carriers, customs agents and other auxiliaries of the customs function, will count with a new table of freight values to determine the taxable base. In addition, some considerations are established in relation to certain types of cargo.

The provision should be applicable for a period of one year, as of the entrance into force of the law. The executive branch is entitled to suspend the application of this adjustment, if the freight prices do not exceed the parameters regulated by this Law. 

Through resolution DGT-R-09-2022 of the General Directorate of Taxation entitled as "Quantification of the Exchange Rate Differential realized in its entities subject to surveillance and inspection of the General Superintendence of Financial Entities (“SUGEF”) and the General Superintendence of Securities (“SUGEVAL”)”, the moment of realization of the exchange differential of the entities subject to surveillance and inspection of the Superintendencies was determined.

The resolution establishes that the moment of realization of exchange differential should be in accordance with the regulation of foreign currency position of the exchange intermediaries regulated by article 4 of the Regulation of Cash Operations, issued by the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Costa Rica.

In this regard, the entity should calculate the exchange differential realized at the end of the fiscal year, and this must be compared with the foreign currency position of the end of the previous fiscal year. In both cases, the selling exchange rate of dollar of the Central Bank of Costa Rica should be used.

Finally, the provisions of this resolution will be applicable only to those entities supervised by SUGEF and SUGEVAL, as of fiscal year 2022.

Through resolution DGT-ICD-R-010-2022, additions and reforms were made to the Joint Resolution of General Scope for the Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries No. DGT-ICD-R-06-2020 of March 26^th, 2020 and its amendments.

As part of these reforms, the following aspects should be considered:

ü  Regarding the ordinary declaration: once the corresponding declaration has been sent, its presentation term is considered completed, being possible to modify it by means of the extraordinary declaration or by means of a corrective declaration, as appropriate.

ü  About the extraordinary declaration: the resolution specifies that the extraordinary declarations should also be submitted when there are variations in the parts of the trust and/or its final beneficiaries.

Finally, in its transitory provisions, it is added that non-profit organizations must maintain the information indicated in chapter II of the Law to Improve the Fight against Tax Fraud (chapter about the transparency and final beneficiaries registry) and have it available to deliver it to the Tax Administration and the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Costa Rican Drug Institute (“ICD”, by its initials in Spanish), when required, until the procedure for submitting it directly to the system is established.