Skip to content
Start free
VAT

The monthly VAT return in Costa Rica: from D-104 to form 150

The new form splits VAT by rate and not by economic activity. If you still build your working paper the old way, it will not line up with the boxes.

6 min readTicuenta
In one sentence: the D-104 was replaced by form 150 when TRIBU-CR came in, in October 2025. It is still monthly, but the new form splits VAT by rate instead of by economic activity.

In the tax authority's official list it appears as form 150, code IVA01, “Value Added Tax”, monthly.

What changed, concretely

The D-104 organised the return around the taxpayer's economic activity. Form 150 organises it around the rate of each transaction.

It looks like a formality and it is not: it changes where the figure has to come from. If your working paper grouped sales by activity, that grouping no longer fills the boxes. What you need now is the breakdown by rate — and within each rate, separating goods, services and capital goods.

Which is why the CABYS code matters more than it did. The rate comes from the code, and the return is now organised by rate. A miscoded product used to produce a wrong invoice; now it also produces a wrong box. How CABYS decides the rate.

When it is filed, and what if the month was quiet

The deadline is set by article 27 of the VAT Act: no later than the fifteenth calendar day of each month, for the previous month's transactions. Calendar days, not business days: if the 15th falls on a Sunday, Sunday is the last day.

Taxpayers […] must settle the tax no later than the fifteenth calendar day of each month, by sworn return of the sales of goods or provision of services corresponding to the previous month. The obligation to file the return subsists even when the tax is not paid, or when the difference between output tax and input tax results in a balance in the taxpayer's favour.

Value Added Tax Act, article 27

That second sentence answers the most common question: a month with no sales is still filed. There is no “month that does not count”. Nor is there one when the credit exceeds the output tax and there is nothing to pay: the return goes in, with its balance in your favour.

Careful not to mix up the two clocks. VAT is due on the 15th calendar day. Rental income — for anyone letting property — is filed within the first 15 business days. They are different counts and they fall on different dates.

What you need to fill it in

  • Your sales, split by rate, and within each rate by goods, services and capital goods.
  • Your purchases with their input VAT, and only the ones you accepted — an unaccepted purchase supports no credit.
  • Exempt and non-subject transactions, in their own boxes. They are not the same thing.
  • Any self-assessed VAT on services bought from abroad.

If you rent out property

Your case is simple on the sales side — one rate, 13 % — and less simple on the purchases side, because the platform commission goes in differently depending on the platform: credited for Airbnb, self-assessed and credited for Booking. Both end up in this same return. The full picture.

From Ticuenta

The month, already split the way the form asks

The figures come out by rate and by type, with the credits from your accepted purchases already in — which is the shape form 150 expects.

See how it works

About this article. The replacement of the D-104 by form 150 came with TRIBU-CR in October 2025; the deadline and the obligation to file even with no tax to pay are article 27 of the VAT Act, quoted above.

Verified as of 24 September 2026. Tax rules change. This is information, not tax advice.

Sources: Current legal texts (Sinalevi) Ministry of Finance

Also in English