New obligations for the Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries in Costa Rica  

Trusts are required to file their Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries declaration in June 2021.

Third-party resource management entities and non-profit organizations must have the information readily available.

Failure to comply with these obligations entails fines and no acts may be carried out at the Registry or with a Notary.

During this month of June 2021, trusts are required to file their Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries declaration through the platform of the Central Bank of Costa Rica.  Before filing their declaration, they must have a company identification number issued by the National Registry, in order to comply with the corresponding requirements. In the case of trusts, they are obligated to file this declaration for the year 2021, but they must file their first declaration, this time only, in the month of June 2021, in subsequent years they will have to file it on the same date as other taxpayers; that is, in the month of April of each year.

Third-party resource management entities and non-profit organizations are not yet required to file the declaration, but they must keep the information available to submit it to the Tax Administration, as well as to the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Costa Rican Drug Institute (ICD in Spanish), when required to do so, until the procedure is established for this purpose.

Failure to provide the corresponding information to the Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries, may be sanctioned with a fine of two percent (2%) of the legal entity or legal structure’s gross income amount, for the income tax period prior to the one in which the infringement occurred, the minimum is three base salaries and the maximum one hundred base salaries, and the National Registry will neither issue certificates of incumbency nor register documents for non-complying parties.  On the other hand, notaries public must make a record of the non-complying party’s situation in the public documents they authorize. 

All the above, is regulated in the Joint Resolution of General Scope of the Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries, number DGT-ICD-R-06-2020, articles 21 to 26 through resolution DGT-ICD-R-012-2021, and Law 9416, in articles 5 and 6 thereof, article 3 of the RTFB Regulations (RTBF in Spanish), as well as article 3  "Third transitory and Fifth Transitory", of Chapter IV,  Transitory Provisions of the Joint Resolution of General Scope DGT-ICD-R-06-2020 of March 26, 2020 and article 84 bis of the Tax Rules and Procedures Code. 

BLP