Straight answers about Colombia, including the awkward ones.

When you are present in Colombia for 183 calendar days or more, continuously or not, within any 365-day period, counting the days you enter and leave. That is article 10 of the Estatuto Tributario. Where the period straddles two tax years, you are treated as resident from the second one. No visa category changes this test.

No. The Colombian tax authority addressed this directly in Concepto General 009079 of 13 July 2023, stating that there is no special tax regime for digital nomads, that they are subject to the ordinary national taxes, and that they may acquire Colombian tax residency under article 10 like anyone else. The visa's restriction on earning from Colombian companies is an immigration condition, not a tax exemption.

You are taxed on worldwide income and occasional gains, and you report assets held inside and outside Colombia, with credit for tax paid abroad and relief under any applicable treaty. This applies from the first year you are resident. The rule that used to defer worldwide taxation until a foreigner's fifth year was repealed by Ley 1607 de 2012 and no longer exists, so any guide still describing it is more than a decade out of date.

Yes. Rental income from Colombian property is Colombian-source income and is taxable here whether or not you are resident. Non-residents are generally taxed at 35% on Colombian-source income, usually collected through withholding. Whether you also have to file a return depends on how the income was received and whether withholding covered it properly.

Almost certainly not. Numeral 3 of article 10, which brings in tests based on the location of your income, assets and family, opens with the words 'ser nacionales' and therefore applies only to Colombian nationals. For a foreign national, only the 183-day count can create Colombian tax residency. This is frequently misexplained to foreigners.

Because registration is what gives you exchange rights. Colombian law conditions the right to remit net profits abroad, to repatriate the proceeds of a sale or liquidation, to reinvest profits and to capitalise remittable sums on the investment having been registered with Banco de la República. An unregistered investment cannot lawfully take capital or profits out through the exchange market.

Where foreign currency is channelled through the exchange market, the exchange declaration that accompanies the inflow is itself the registration, so getting that declaration right at the moment of transfer matters more than anything you can do afterwards. Where there is no foreign currency inflow, for example an investment in kind or a capitalisation of debt, a separate registration declaration is filed instead.

It depends entirely on how the money arrived at the time. Where funds came from abroad and the documentation exists, the position can often be regularised, and Colombian law expressly allows late registration, though the exchange penalty regime still applies. We look at what actually happened before telling you what is possible, because the answer genuinely varies.

Real estate bought by a non-resident with funds brought in from abroad is foreign investment for exchange purposes and should be registered. Many foreign buyers complete the purchase through a notary, never register the investment, and only discover the gap when they try to sell and move the proceeds out.

Colombian law includes a stabilisation guarantee: the conditions for reimbursing the investment and remitting profits that were legally in force at the date of registration cannot later be changed to the investor's disadvantage, except temporarily if international reserves fall below three months of imports. Registration therefore fixes your rights as at that date, which is another reason not to leave it.

A written proposal after a free 30-minute call. Fees depend on transaction volume, headcount, the number of entities and the reporting cadence, which is why we do not publish a price list: a figure quoted before seeing the case would be either wrong or padded. Government fees, notary costs, apostilles and translations are third-party costs, itemised separately and paid at cost.

Calls, proposals, financial statements and monthly management reports are in English. Filings to Colombian authorities are prepared and submitted in Spanish because the law requires it, and each is explained to you in English before it goes in.

Yes, and a review of what was previously filed is usually the first piece of work. That review is where unclaimed credits, wrongly assigned tax responsibilities on the RUT and undocumented positions surface. We handle the handover directly so you are not caught between two providers.

The director sets the technical position and signs what leaves the office, and you have a dedicated accountant for day-to-day work. Every deliverable goes through a second review before it reaches you, which is the practical difference between engaging a firm and hiring one person.

For a first call, nothing formal: the country you are tax resident in today, roughly how long you plan to spend in Colombia, and whether anything already exists here. If we go ahead, the document list is specific to your case and arrives with the written proposal.