Ref: Reform Law to the General Customs Law No.10271 of 06/29/2022
Prior to the reform to the General Customs Law that came into effect on June 29, 2022, when a person or company became aware of any non-compliance, omission, or insufficiency in applying customs regulations that required them to pay taxes after importation, in many cases, the stumbling block of sanctions (fines) arose. For example, if a company that had imported merchandise and discovered two years later that it had underpaid 10 million colones in taxes, even if it was interested in voluntarily correcting said customs declaration and paying the amount owed, doubts arose. Once customs authorities became aware of the payment of these taxes, they could proceed to apply a fine with a reduction of 75% or 80%. Thus, as the applicable fine is twice the unpaid taxes (200%), in the case of the example, the company was at risk of customs initiating a sanctioning process to impose an administrative fine of approximately 4 million colones.
That is, the bona fide importer "was looking for wool, but ran the risk of being shorn." However, with the recent reform to the General Customs Law, this situation will change radically, as Article 233 a) establishes that "when the offender voluntarily rectifies and pays, where appropriate, non-compliance, omissions, or deficiencies, whether or not they generate tax differences, without any action by the customs authority to verify compliance with the customs tax obligation, he will not be penalized."
The complete elimination of the fine of twice the amount of unpaid taxes, in cases where no crime was committed and where customs has not carried out any inspections, is very positive news for responsible companies and individuals who make voluntary corrections in good faith and who consider customs compliance a fundamental part of their internal policies.
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