QCOSTARICA – A resolution by the Ministerio de Hacienda (Ministry of Finance) will increase the cost of alcoholic beverages starting Monday, August 1, with an update on the tax rate.
The new tax on alcoholic beverages from ¢3.6 colones to ¢5.23 colones, depending on the alcohol content.
It is an update of the rate of this tax due to inflation that, according to the Minister of Finance, Nogui Acosta, is necessary to prevent the tax collection from being eroded. “Like the fuel tax, the alcoholic beverage tax is also updated,” he commented.
This will represent a hard blow for consumers and for the economic reactivation, assured Gilberto Campos, legislator of the Partido Liberal Progresista (PLP).
“It is foreseeable that people resort to substituting products, opting for lower cost ones that could put their health at risk. People tend to even look for smuggled products that are of very poor quality. (…) People should be able to have access, under regulated conditions, to products that are not going to affect their health by acquiring them on the black market,” said the legislator.
Campos added that alcoholic beverages have a large amount of taxes within their cost, so updating these taxes increases their cost.
