Paying Property Taxes

[jmorberg]

Hi,

We bought land earlier this year in Costa Rica and do not live there. We have family there that does though. Can you pay property taxes in San Jose for property in any Municipality in the country? For example our property is in the Parrita Municipality. I have heard yes and no, so before I sent them off to pay would like to get confirmation of this.

Thanks

[sprite]

I was told I had to pay my taxes in the municipality to which my property pertains by my attorney. I did no further research to confirm that. It is my undrstanding that the taxes are a resource for the municipality so it does make sense.

[jmorberg]

I was told today that you can pay your taxes at any bank, which the Municipalidad has an account.

[maravilla]

This is the year they recalculate your property taxes. See post below that came from another CR board:

This year, right now, in fact, municipalities are asking you to
formally Declare the value of your Properties whether in your name or
in the name of your corporation. Law #7509. This is an
every-five-year ordeal. First, let me say that YOUR declaration of
value will ALWAYS be lower than the value that the city will put on it
IF you “don’t bother” to declare… reason being that the property tax
is based upon that value and the higher the value the more you pay in
annual property taxes. For those that “don’t bother” the city hires
“peritos”, experts, who actually visit your property… no, you don’t
have to let them in either, but they will adjust their rejection
upward on your evaluation. The Ministry of Hacienda (online) has
“guides” as to the value per square meter of your land and value per
square meter of your buildings, depending upon materials and location,
times the area in square meters. Also you can apply the “age” factor
as a depreciation of the value of the BUILDINGS, not the land. Five
years ago they were using 30 years as viable life of your house… now
I see that they have upped it to 40 years. It may save you some money
if you apply the 30 year life calculation up until 2003 and then the
last 5 years at the 40 year life expectancy.

First, you should make a “worksheet” before presenting yourself to the
line of declarants..
. fill out and download the form to be found on
your local municipalities web site. If they don’t have one, you will
have to go to the Municipality and ask for the form they require. For
San Jose it would be:
http://www.msj.go.cr/archivos/tramites/form_declar_bien_inmueble.htm you can
fill it out online and then print it out. You will have to have some
of your numbers and documents at hand to fill in things like the
property number in the Folio Real and the map number of the Plano
Catastrado, among other things. You can also just print out the blank
form and fill it in by hand at your leisure, but it must be declared
by December 19th in most cases. Don’t wait until the last minute as
the lines will be getting longer each day. The Muni will not keep
your worksheet, only to use it to generate their own document. They
may have the cheek, a la Muni San Jose, to “require” that you also
submit a copy of your map, Plano Catastrado, a certificate from the
Property Registry, your Persona Juridica if the property is in the
name of a corporation, the copy of your last declaration and maybe
even some money. You DO NOT have to submit ANY documents supporting
your Declaration! Wave Law #8220, “Law Protecting the Citizen from
Excesses of Requisites and Administrative Procedures” at them which
briefly says that if the law or regulation doesn’t list documents that
you have to supply, you don’t have to supply them. And Law #7509
doesn’t list any. Can you imagine the Muni not having a map of your
property? Not knowing where it is in the Registry? Not having a copy
or record of your last Declaration? Caution: Bureaucrats at work too
lazy to consult their own records….and a Law (8220) that actually
makes sense!

So after you have Declared, the “perito” behind the glass will show
you what they calculate your property to be worth. If you say, “I
accept” (you should quickly calculate what 1/4 of 1% would be as that
will be your annual tax) they will print out their generated form,
sign it and you sign it and they give you a copy. If you do NOT
accept their valuation… remember, their program for calculations
already has the Ministry of Hacienda figures built in… then you can
“dicker” somewhat… go back over the description of your buildings
and make sure that you didn’t say “wood” when you meant “concrete”,
that you included the maids bath, so leave that one off, that you gave
the roof area instead of the enclosed-by-walls area, that you
mistakenly included the area of a basement that is below street
level… area below street level doesn’t count… and you can probably
trim off a million or so here and there, which is 2,500 colones saved
per million trimmed per year! The bored perito will go along with
almost anything reasonable that you provide. Eight bedrooms and two
baths might not fly, but four bedrooms with four adjoining offices and
two baths just might…. what do you have to lose? This accepted
Declaration will be the new value of your property for 2009 and the
tax will be due every 3 months or you can pay the whole year at
once… but if there is no incentive such as a discount, pay every
three months with devaluated colones.

I relate this to you because I just went thru it. I notice that there
are some inconsistencies between the last Declaration in 2003 and now,
2008, that are worth noting. My land value decreased by 25% and I
found that odd and will look into it. My buildings evaluation went up
by 280%!! Almost tripled! Now what is that all about? I’ll look into
that also as these processes are always appealable. If your property
suffered a dramatic change such as the house burned down, they put in
a dump across the street or your neighbors installed an illegal pig
farm, attach an accompanying letter to your work sheet to deliver to
the Muni in mitigation of their calculations or they will assume that
you are delighted and ready to pay…

[Author]

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