At times when Costa Rica is in a difficult financial position with a 6.2% fiscal deficit at the end of 2017, Helio Fallas, Treasury Minister, stated that the fact that the headquarters of companies Uber and Airbnb are in other countries has made the exchange of information “difficult” and this has been a factor that hasn’t allowed the Costa Rican government to establish a mechanism to tax these corporations.

“There are a series of limitations that Treasury has had, one of the biggest ones has been that we’ve asked for information to Uber central offices, because they don’t have a central office in Costa Rica, and then they request the information to their main office, but since the central offices are in Europe we have had difficulty getting it flowing”, explained Fallas in an interview with national newspaper Diario Extra.

According to Fallas, the situation with AirBnB is similar.

Uber operates in Costa Rica since August of 2015, it has been declared an illegal activity, but yet the service continues to function normally and now includes UberEats, yet the government has been incapable of charging taxes for this economic activity that is taking place within the country.

Lorenzo Figliuoli, representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Central America commented, “Since this is a service being offered, the same legislation should apply that is already applied to others, if other services pay taxes, these should too”.

Isabel Vargas, president of the National Tourism Chamber, was clear in their position “We have expressed to the Government the urgency of regulating all the activities of the collaborative economy like other countries do in the world, this would eliminate disloyal competition and could generate a source of income important for the country without limiting the option of users to have access to these services”.

“If the tools to charge them taxes don’t exist, it is the State’s obligation to create them. We support the Costa Rica Hotel Chamber in this battle to protect the rights and equal conditions for small and large hotels”, said Sary Valverde president of the Costa Rica Hotel Chamber.

The Costa Rican Hotel Chamber states they have had communication with directors of AirBnB for Latin America and they have expressed their interest in paying taxes, in this sense they don’t accept Treasury’s excuse claiming difficulties due to where the companies are located.

In fact Shawn Sullivan, director of Public Policies for AirBnB, confirmed earlier this year that Costa Rica is the most important and biggest market in the entire region for the company, and they have plans to continue their growth in the country, in fact they recently launched their platform “Experiences in Costa Rica” .

AirBnB operates in the country since 2011, and according to Sullivan they have presented proposals to Treasury for the payment of taxes and nothing has been resolved as of yet.

In the meantime the government continues to lose money day after day and new taxes will soon be implemented to bring down the fiscal deficit.