Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries, better known in Spanish as “Registro de Transparencia y Beneficiarios Finales” (RTFS or RTBF).

According to the government, the Transparency and Final Beneficiary Registration deadline has been extended.

The process is a new corporate obligation that entered into effect on September 1st, 2019. This registration’s main objective is to create an electronic registry that enables government authorities to identify the individuals behind legal structures such as companies and corporations for proper taxation.

As a result, corporations, through their legal representative or shareholders, must provide the Central Bank of Costa Rica with the declaration based on the shareholders’ or legal representatives’ registration.

On August 13^th, 2020 in “The Gazette” (known in Spanish as “La Gaceta”) No. 201 the Resolution No. DGT-ICD-R-19-2020 was published, Amendment to a Joint Resolution of General Scope for the Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries. The articles that have been amended fall under the Generalities of the Registry of Transparency and Final Beneficiaries (RTFS) of the resolution mentioned before and published on March 26^th 2020.

The most relevant changes that this reform brings are:

• The corporations that presented the 2019 declaration in the RTBF system will not have to submit a declaration in 2020. Instead, the RTBF system will automatically, and only once, use the declaration submitted in the previous year as if it were for 2020. The corporation must file the next declaration in April 2021.
• Moving forward, the ordinary declaration (annual mandatory declaration) will need to be completed in the month of April, for which the RTBF system will preload the last declaration filed, so that the corporation can update the data that has changed, or simply confirm that the declaration does not need changes.
• Companies that were assigned a legal identification number in the National Registry, either by registration, or by request for assignment, between January 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, will not be required to complete the registry until April 2021.

Any corrections to the declaration can be made once, via a corrective statement, which must be filed within one month (30 natural days) of the declaration and include a signed document justifying the reasons for the amendment

• Companies that need to make changes to their 2019 declaration will be required to present an extraordinary declaration, or make corrections in accordance with the resolution. In this single, extraordinary instance they must submit and accept said changes before their next declaration in April 2021.

Trusts, third-party resource managers, and nonprofit organizations, which are not yet required to file the return directly in the RTBF system, must maintain the information provided in Chapter II of the Law to Improve the Fight against Tax Fraud and deliver it to the Tax Administration when required, until the procedure is established for it to be filed directly in the system. The process for these organizations has not yet been established.

Pending ordinary declarations:

Declarations must be submitted in ascending order; from the oldest period to the current one, since the obligation to present the ordinary return is annual.

Karen Ulate collaborated with this article.