According to the Minister of Tourism, Gustavo Segura, with only 20,000 tourists, classified as digital nomads, coming to the country for a year, they would generate foreign exchange for $ 1 billion.
The head of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT), said that the country manages a tourism strategy where the interest is not that 15 million tourists arrive, but rather quality tourism, such as the one that this law allows.
“If we receive 20,000 digital nomads in a year, it would mean 1 billion dollars more in income, which would raise the income of the tourism sector by 25% more than what we received before the Pandemic,” Segura explained.
The Digital Nomads Law was signed this past Wednesday by the President of the Republic, Carlos Alvarado, and seeks to offer a series of tax incentives to tourists who want to come to settle in the country for a time while they work.
The liberationist deputy, Carlos Ricardo Benavides, promoter of the reform, explained in the program that the digital nomad is a tourist who would be in the country in periods of three, six months or up to a year, and that in terms of taxes will pay all the tributes like any Costa Rican while they are in the country, but with the benefit that they would not pay double income tax for their work.
What is missing now for the implementation of this law?
According to Benavides the transitory for the creation of the regulation establishes a time of two months to have it ready, but he hopes that in a month it can be presented. That was also the position of Minister Segura, who pointed out that he is already in talks with the National Insurance Institute (INS) to have clarity about insurance coverage and added that he hopes that the procedure that guarantees the tourist as a digital nomad, due to their earning capacity, it should not take more than three to four days.
In that sense, Deputy Benavides added that it is important that the authorization for these tourists to be able to use their driver’s license in the country is clear, as well as the one-stop paperwork that Migration will be in charge of.
Making life easier
He recalled that the country competes with countries in the Caribbean, Europe and Panama, which already have advanced regulations on this matter. “It is useful for Costa Rica that good people with good habits come here to work, to spend, to live and work, and to achieve this we must make life easy for them,” the legislator emphasized.
