The nation's tax collecting agency has suspended a new law that required residents and businesses to report their major expenses and incomes four times a year instead of annually.
The tax agency, the Dirección General de Tributación, was not very communicative about the change, and some business people only heard about the change as they were preparing tax reports Thursday. Some learned of the change when they appeared at the Tributación office to file the report.
Francisco Fonseca Montero, the director general of the agency, signed a decree Feb. 15 suspending the reporting requirement. That decree was supposed to have been published in the La Gaceta sometime in early March.
Each year people doing business here have to file a report listing payments to professionals and various suppliers. In a two-part form business people must list all sales they have made in the year to a single customer that total more than 2.5 million colons, about $4,900.
They must also list their expenses for purchases or services for more than 2.5 million colons.
Rents, professional fees, commissions and interest are special cases. The form filler must report any transactions to a company or individual that total more than 50,000 colons during the fiscal year. So visits to a dentist for which the amount paid totals more than 50,000 must be reported. That's about $97.50.
The quarterly reporting rule reduced the threshold amount to 25 percent.
The decree said the new law was suspended temporarily, in part, because the agency's computer updating is behind schedule. Unofficial reports say that the agency just could not handle the expected flood of paperwork. Tributación representatives were known to have met with lawmakers, but there were no announcements to the public. In fact, the last press release issued by the agency was last June. There was no explanation why the Asamblea Legislativa passed the law without considering these factors.
The agency did, however, notify the Colegio de Contedores Públicos de Costa Rica, which carries the decree on its Web site. But even accountant members of the trade organization were confused Thursday.