Senor, you have mistakenly assumed that the Costa Rican government will refrain from taking an action solely on the merit of it being a very bad decision. Have you not seen the roads here? Have you never spoken to an ICE operator?
This country is being governed by 6th graders in adult costumes. A country where restaurants raise prices if the business is slow. You cannot apply American/European business logic (or any logic at all) to the Costa Rican approach. Rather, you can, but it won't matter.
They don't work with pie charts, statistical graphs, P&L statements, YTD spreadsheets, etc... They just dream up a number, and hope for the best.
A Tico hot dog vendor selling dogs for 1000 colones gets the idea that if he charges 5000, he'll make 5 times the profit. It doesn't occur to him that nobody will buy hot dogs from him any more.
They will try, like many places before them, to impose this dream tax. And books will either stay hoping incompetence will keep the law from being implemented upon them, or they will leave to Panama or another place that's more predictable.
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BTW, any jurisdictions like Costa Rica, that don't require any license, and don't tax foreign income?
Panama doesn't tax foreign income, but requires a license ($40k per 7 years + $20k per year = $25,714 per year average = $2142 per month average). Disclosure of ownership is actually more annoying and costly to hide than the actual tax.
Cyprus appears to require no license presently, but does have a 10% corporate income tax (without an exclusion on foreign income).
Note, 10% on net income still comes out way way less than 2% tax on wagers. Creative accounting and transfer pricing makes it very easy to reduce net income and move profit into untaxed jurisdictions.
Panama doesn't tax foreign income, but requires a license ($40k per 7 years + $20k per year = $25,714 per year average = $2142 per month average). Disclosure of ownership is actually more annoying and costly to hide than the actual tax.
Cyprus appears to require no license presently, but does have a 10% corporate income tax (without an exclusion on foreign income).
Note, 10% on net income still comes out way way less than 2% tax on wagers. Creative accounting and transfer pricing makes it very easy to reduce net income and move profit into untaxed jurisdictions.
So every two years for the last ten years we have been alternating between big taxes and federal raids, and I have yet to see either go down. Not to say this all isnt big news and all, but if our reliable source of "where this industry is headed" is this douchebag tortillera then we may be in more trouble than i originally thought.
