[cobb]

We retired here in August of 2006. At that time my wife had worked for about 18 months to complete the paperwork to import [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccobb/1369352648/]our beautiful Macaw, Rio[/url], whom we had hand weaned 14 years earlier. (I’m not saying that it takes that long to complete the papers, but she wanted to make sure everything was in order.)

The process is to locate a US Vet and a Costa Rican Vet and make sure they communicate details with each other and with you. The Costa Rica vet can provide the import papers, and the US vet can provide the health certificates. You also need a certificate from the US Dept of Wildlife (or Fish and Game? sorry, I forget exactly what this was for). Be prepared for delays. Then make [b]sure[/b] the vet here can meet you at the airport to deal with any last-minute customs issues that arise.

After all that, after our container left with all of our belongings, and three days before our flight out, the Minister of Health here “decreed” that no more birds would enter Costa Rica. Period. And, since it was a decree, he didn’t need any legislative approval to do this.

Thankfully, I was able to locate a wonderful family who had a lot of experience with large birds and who were looking for a new addition. They were the first people that Rio ever met, other than my wife and I, whom she immediately and obviously liked. As good as that was we were obviously devastated to leave Rio behind.

And, as others mentioned, of course this would not help control avian flu. A domestic household bird is, by definition, quarantined 24/7 anyway. 🙁 I haven’t followed this, and didn’t realize the decree was still in effect. I hope that it’s lifted to allow you to come here. Best wishes.

[Update: Wow, sorry! I didn’t realize that the earlier postings were from 2007. Definitely check with your vet, and get in touch with a vet here. The person my wife was talking to is Dr. Adrian Molina-Araya — dradrianmolina [at] hotmail [dot] com. Hope this email still works, as it was several years ago. Unfortunately there is no phone number in any of the old papers that I have.]

[cobb]

[quote=”jneiman”]I used the software and figured my house is VC07 and included a concrete pad, fencing and grass area. It came in at 93,635,425 colones. The whole classification is so subjective. It probably represents about 55% of market value.[/quote]

Thank you for this info! Since you so close to the cutoff point, would you be willing to share any dollar values? If not, I understand. And maybe I’m off track as others are trying to tell me, but this sure seems like an important point to me.

[quote=”jneiman”]Is the filing a requirement for any homeowner?[/quote]

As I understand it, no filing is required.

Just to be clear, I’m no more in the Real Estate business than anyone else who owns a home, I definitely support the intent of this tax, and do not under represent my property at the Muni.

[cobb]

Sorry, guess I’m not being clear. I am not concerned here with the amount of tax to pay, but at what price point, in Gringo terms of price, an owner will need to pay taxes.

This is causing uncertainty in the market, which depresses the resale value of homes. If we can determine, with reasonable accuracy, at what dollar value, again in Gringo terms of value, a home has to have in order to pay tax, that will go a long way in making people feel comfortable again.

So, I’m looking at it backward. There is no way a $175K house will need to pay tax, so 100M clearly does not mean the same to Hacienda as it does to you and me. If the minimum value, approximately, necessary to pay tax is not in the $600K range, than what is it?

[cobb]

[quote=”Minuit”]And FWI, 100M colones doesn’t mean 600 000$ but little under 200 000$. the math is 100 000 000.00 / 575 and not multiplied, sorry about that.[/quote]

That is my point: It does not work. If homes in the $175K range valuate far below 100M colones in the software, then we need to determine what 100M equals [b]in Hacienda’s view[/b] of the value of a property, and maybe use an exchange rate of 166.

For people who’s homes are determined to be just below or above the 100M mark, if you are willing to share actual dollar values that would be tremendously helpful in figuring this out.

As for what to include in the preliminary calculation to determine whether tax is due, I’m not certain. I guess it’s time to practice my technical Spanish and see how this is described the law. I’ve only tried reading a little of it so far.

[cobb]

Hi, Minuit, thank you for your response. It seems that all of the furor over this new tax has obscured the fact that 100M colones, in Hacienda’s view, does not equal US$175K, but is perhaps closer to US$600K.

Which makes much more sense to me, given that originally 12,000 props (now revised to 10k) were expected to be subject to tax, which includes all but the smallest hotels. If the cutoff really was $175k, the number of props owing would be, afaikt, far greater.

As for valuing other improvements, after you have calculated one or more buildings using the “Construcciones Principales,” section, the tab labeled “Construcciones Adicionales” will become active. Click on this and the “TIPO” drop-down menu will now contain many other options such as PI0x for Piscinas, where value is based on cubic meters of water. In fact, PI02 includes the value of a machine house and machinery.

Minuit, if you did not use this other section to calculate your pool value, how did you determine it’s at 1.5x orig cost? Thanks again for your help with this.

Also, here are some other calculations trying to determine where the cutoff is for various sizes and ages of properties, pushing the square footage to just below 100M colones. The terms used here are straight from the software, and translations of some terms and definitions [url=http://ccobb.net/hacienda/Consuta%20de%20la%20Tipologia.html]are available here[/url]. Dollar amounts per square meter are using 575 for exchange.

 [b]VC08 - high quality, 3.5 bath[/b]
 2 years old, v. good: 260 mt / 2,800 ft = 99.58M ($660/mt)
 8 years old, good:    280 mt / 3,000 ft = 99.7M  ($619/mt)
 [b]VC07 - good quality, 2.5 bath[/b]
 2 years old, v. good: 312 mt / 3,350 ft = 99.37M ($554/mt)
 8 years old, good     340 mt / 3,650 ft = 99.56M ($509/mt) 

The more input we can get on this, the better we can determine what the “reality” is, in Hacienda’s view.

[cobb]

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has successfully used the Hacienda software application to determine property value. It’s a little funky to start using but, once you get used to it, seems to do a good job.

My question is: Of the value you obtained, what percentage is this of either a) replacement cost, or b) construction cost, and c) your guess at percentage of market value (what ever that means today).

For my property, I did a best guess with their software, added 10% for luck, and obtained a value that is roughly half of construction cost (completed in 2007), and about a quarter of what I estimate market value to be. Another person I’ve been in email contact with indicated that the software valued his 7-year old property at almost exactly the original construction cost.

BTW, if you try installing Hacienda’s software and it doesn’t work, you might need to install the latest update from Microsoft of the so-called “Visual Basic Runtime Environment.” Links to download the Hacienda software and supporting documents, along with links to the Microsoft patch, and translations of a few terms used by the software app [url=http://ccobb.net/blahblahblog/?p=641 ]are available on my website[/url]. I don’t speak a lot of Spanish, and had luck using Google’s [url=http://translate.google.com/]language translation[/url] service for the terms and descriptions.

Also, BTW, I had been hearing rumors about the maximum value this software would place on a home. Using the highest category for a house, zero years old, in optimal condition (i.e. no wear or tear), I couldn’t get it to return a value of more than $783 per meter, at 575 colones per dollar.
Cheers,
Chris

p.d. Why pay an attorney $300 to $700 when all they will do is take the numbers you have to figure out anyway, and then just plug them into this software? If you can get a [b]written[/b] indemnification from paying later penalties, if any, then it might be worth it.

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