Costa Rica still lets you put a house in a sociedad anónima or a sociedad de responsabilidad limitada. Plenty of foreign owners do. The company is a separate legal person, so a claim against you is not automatically a claim against the house, and a claim against the house is not automatically a claim against your other life. Shares can be left to heirs with less theater than a probate of foreign land. A manager with a power of attorney can deal with the utility company while you are in another season. Those are real advantages. They are not free, and they are not a tax trick. See Taxes and legal guide.
What you pay to keep the shell alive
Attorneys commonly estimate $800 to $1,500 to form the company, on top of the registry. The 2026 registry fee to record a commercial company is ₡46,220, about $103 at the mid-September reference rate near ₡450 per dollar, plus a small ₡2,000 charge. After that, an accountant and a registered agent are often budgeted around $300 to $600 a year.
The annual corporate tax for 2026, on a base salary of ₡462,200, is ₡69,330 if the company is inactive, then ₡115,550, ₡138,660, or ₡231,100 depending on the income band. That is roughly $154 to $515. It is due in January; in 2026 the deadline landed on Monday, February 2. A new company pays within 30 days of registration. A company that does not pay cannot get registry certificates or record documents, which can freeze a sale. Forget the old line that this tax is a hundred-odd dollars. Use the colones.
Every April 1 through April 30 the company files its beneficial-owner declaration, the RTBF, and it files again within 15 business days of any change. Fines run from 3 to 100 base salaries: ₡1.39 million to ₡46.2 million, roughly $3,100 to $103,000. That filing is the chore that surprises people who thought a company was “set and forget.”
Residency and the transfer tax
If investor residency is even a maybe, pause. Current immigration practice expects the qualifying property to stand in the applicant’s personal name. Buy through a company first and you can disqualify the investment, then pay for a second transfer, and a second transfer tax, to put the house where the application needed it. Confirm that practice with an immigration attorney against the rules in force on the day you file. Do not form the company on a forum post.
Buying the shares of a company that already owns a house is also not a quiet way around the 1.5 percent transfer tax. An indirect transfer of a property-owning company can still trigger that tax, and the buyer inherits every debt, lawsuit, and missing filing the company ever collected. Some brokerage notes describe a share transfer as costing about the same 1.5 percent in total. Others emphasize that the tax can still apply. Your attorney has to say which description fits this company. This page does not promise a savings.
One more limit: a company with majority foreign capital cannot hold a Maritime Zone concession. If the land is titled and well inland of the 200-meter line, that rule is irrelevant. If anyone is casual about where the high-tide line falls, it is the whole deal.