Colombia · Tax regime
Colombian Tax Residency and Wealth Tax
Ley 2277 of 2022 made the impuesto al patrimonio permanent. We read art. 292-3 verbatim. It contains no exclusion for foreign residents.
We include this as a programme because it is the single decisive fact about Colombia, and it is one that gets buried more often than not. Colombia is the only major destination in this region that charges an annual wealth tax on a new resident's worldwide assets. There is no exemption, no grace period and no phase-in. For an eight-figure family, the wealth tax alone can exceed the entire cost of a Panamanian or Paraguayan alternative, every single year.
Qualifying routes
72,000 UVT × 52,374 = COP 3,770,928,000 ≈ USD 1.16M of net assets (art. 294-3). The first 12,000 UVT of a primary residence is excluded.
The facts
- Minimum
- 3770.9M COP
- Total landed cost
- 0.5% to 1.5% of worldwide net assets annually for residents above the threshold
- Route type
- Tax regime, not a visa
- Physical presence
- 183 days, continuous or discontinuous, within any 365-day window. If the window straddles two years, residency begins in the second year (art. 10 ET).
- Family
- Individual
- Permanent residency
- Not applicable
- Citizenship
- Not applicable
- Language test
- Not applicable
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- Spending 183 days in any 365-day window triggers tax residency.An annual DIAN filing that covers worldwide income and assets.A wealth tax return once net assets exceed 72,000 UVT.
- The old 5-year exclusion for a foreign resident's foreign assets, under Ley 1943/2010, did not survive into Ley 2277 art. 292-3. A foreign tax resident is exposed on worldwide net assets from day one. This reading is high-confidence, taken verbatim from the statute, and it contradicts a great deal of published advice.
- Rates are 0.5% / 1.0% / 1.5%. The 1.5% band is temporary, running through 2023–2026 under art. 296-3's parágrafo. From 2027, the top rate falls to 1.0% above 122,000 UVT.
- Non-residents are taxed on Colombian-situs assets only. That is precisely why the planning answer is usually to hold the visa and stay under 183 days.
- 2025–26 showed the political risk vividly. The Ley de Financiamiento was archived on 9 December 2025. The government then declared an economic emergency. Decreto 1474/2025 cut the threshold to 40,000 UVT and raised rates to 5%. The Constitutional Court struck it down in Sentencia C-079/2026, following C-075/2026, which had voided the enabling Decreto 1390. The ruling applied retroactively, with DIAN refunds. A second emergency decree, 150/2026, tied to floods, was conditionally upheld. But its wealth tax expressly excludes natural persons. It reaches only legal persons above 200,000 UVT, at 0.5%/1.6%.
- Colombia has controlled foreign company rules, known locally as ECE, under articles 882+ of the ET. It signed the CRS MCAA on 29 October 2014, with the first exchange in 2017, and joined the OECD in 2020. There is no opacity here.
- Colombia has no expatriation exit tax. What it does have is the impuesto de timbre por salida del pais, a per-trip departure levy set out in Decreto 0625 of 19 June 2026. The two are often confused, and that confusion is wrong.