On 18 March 2019, the Government of Costa Rica published Resolution No DGT-R-008-2019 in the Official Gazette. The resolution amends Resolution DGT-R-001-2018, which regulated the information that companies headquartered in Costa Rica have to report for the purposes of automatic exchange of country-by-country (CbC) reports in accordance with the OECD’s BEPS Action 13.

Under the amendment, the CbC reporting requirements apply in respect of multinational groups only which was generally referred to as groups or multinational groups in terms of the requirements. As a result, the wording in article 2 (obligation to report), article 3 (obligation to notify) and article 5 (procedure to file the report) was amended to include a reference to multinational group.

According to this amendment, and in particular Article 2 thereof, country-by-country reporting is applicable to multinationals based in Costa Rica whose consolidated group revenue equal to or higher than EUR 750 million in the previous year; it applies from fiscal year 2017 onwards.

With regard to article 3, any Costa Rican entity of an MNE group must notify the Tax Administration of its status as the reporting entity, whether it is the ultimate parent entity or surrogate parent entity, of a multinational group. In addition, any ultimate parent entity residing in Costa Rica that decides to file the CbC report in a foreign tax jurisdiction must notify the Costa Rican Tax Administration of its decision and indicate the name of the multinational group.

The report should be submitted to the tax administration in an XML file that meets the standard structure defined by the OECD and must be filed by December 31 of the following year (regardless of the year end).