Category: News

 FEBRUARY 1, 2021 

On January 20th, Dominican President Luis Abinader enacted Law 7-21, which extends the term to apply for the benefits of the Voluntary Wealth Disclosure Law (46-20) for an additional period of 90 days.  

The Voluntary Wealth Disclosure Law No. 46-20, is of utmost interest to real estate investors in general. The law establishes a special and transitory amnesty tax for taxpayers to voluntarily disclose or reassess all their movable and real estate properties, including those which may have not been previously declared or registered at the tax level.  

The law, which applies and benefits Dominican nationals and resident or non-resident foreigners alike, as well as local or foreign DR-registered corporate entity holdings, calls for taxpayers to normalize their fiscal obligations and voluntarily disclose their assets at market value before the Dominican Tax Office (DGII), through the payment of a one-time and definitive 2% across-the-board amnesty tax overall disclosed or reassessed assets. 

According to the new extension, taxpayers will have a limited period of 90 days starting from its date of enactment to apply before the DGII in order to benefit from the tax amnesty. The new deadline to apply is April 20th. 

In practical terms, this law gives taxpayers the opportunity to update the value of their properties, either because: a. their value has increased significantly; b. if at the time of purchase they were not recorded for their real value; c. if they built improvements and never had them declared; or, d. if in the purchase contract the price was established in United States Dollars and the Dominican Peso devaluation has diminished their registered acquisition value.  

If you decide to benefit from this law, you would be paying 2% on the increased value, thus eliminating the risk of having to pay 25-27% taxes on capital gains in case of an eventual sale in the future. 

Bear in mind that the acquisition value of the property for capital gains purposes is not the same value based on which you pay your annual real estate property taxes every year (IPI).  

The Amnesty Law is voluntary. You should seek advice from your tax counsel to receive an evaluation of your specific case before the final 90-day term expires. 

The Escuela Nacional de la Judicatura (ENJ), the Academia Dominicana de la Lengua (ADL) and the Fundación Guzmán Ariza Pro Academia Dominicana de la Lengua (FGA) will develop two fundamental works to improve the use of the Spanish language in the Dominican judicial bodies: The Style Manual of the Dominican Judicial Branch and the Dominican Legal Dictionary. 

These publications arise from an agreement signed by the three entities, represented by Dr. Dariel Suárez, director of the ENJ, and by lawyer and academic Fabio J. Guzmán Ariza, who is president of the firm Guzmán Ariza, representing the ADL and as president of the FGA, within the framework of the inter-institutional collaboration agreement, signed on April 4, 2013 by the Council of the Judiciary branch with the ADL and the FGA. 

The purpose of the editorial project, which will be directed by Fabio Guzmán Ariza, is to contribute to improving the use of legal Spanish in the Dominican Judicial branch, offering judges and judicial personnel adequate tools to write clear, precise, concise, coherent legal and correct texts, so that they can be more understandable for the common citizen, who is the final recipient of the judicial service. 

Both works will focus on the legal language in use in the Dominican Republic and will be published in digital format and for free distribution among the judicial community. 

It is an effort that is in tune with the work that the Real Academia Española and the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española have been carrying out in recent years, in collaboration with the General Council of the Judicial branch of Spain, with the publication of the Justice’s Style Book and the Dictionary of Legal Spanish.