Property industry professionals in Panama have been trying to decipher the implications of Law No. 49, which made far-ranging changes in the tax code.
While details are best left to tax specialists, the law, implemented in September, calls for new property taxes on some apartments and adjusts the capital gains tax, making it a bit more complicated to figure out the long-term return on property.
On his Panama Investor blog, developer Sam Taliaferro includes a six-page, semi-easy-to-understand breakdown of the specifics of the law from a tax attorney. (Scroll to bottom of the page.)
“The bottom line is that the government is moving to tax all property in the country,” Taliaferro concludes (although that’s not the case now).
Attorney Gonzalo de la Guardia focuses on the property tax issue in a column for Panama Guide. “With law 49, the general exoneration for land of under 30K has been eliminated for apartments registered as horizontal property,” he writes. “Thus ALL condos will pay taxes on the land portion of their value whatever that may be.”
