In Costa Rica, the new tax law increases the penalties for mistakes and omissions in income tax statements.

Effective from September 28, the Law for Strengthening Tax Management and Law for Enforcing Standards of Fiscal Transparency in some cases doubles fines to be paid for misreporting.

Errors without malice will be subject to a penalty of 50% of the unpaid amount, when it used to be 25%, while omissions or mistakes with bad intentions will incur fines of 75% to 100% for so-called “serious behavior” and 150% on those denominated “very serious behavior.”

Additionally, the Tax Administration now has more facilities for requesting financial information from banks.

“Before there used to be a need for a strong indication of illegal taxation in order for Taxation to request financial information from a taxpayer, whereas now they only have to show that they are doing an audit and the information that they required in order to verify”, reported Nacion.com.

Source: Nacion.com