The step-by-step plan for Costa Rica

Costa Rica has three cards for whoever stays, and all three are in the migration law of 2009. The pensionado shows a lifelong pension of at least 1,000 dollars a month. The rentista shows fixed income of at least 2,500 dollars a month. The inversionista invests. All three get a temporary residence of two years, renewable, and after three years the permanent one.

What the brochures haven't yet processed: the law of 2021 that let the household goods and two cars be imported tax-free and gave twenty percent off the transfer tax applied to applications in the first five years. Those five years expired on 14 July 2026. Whoever comes now pays duties on their household goods and the full tax on a car — and that is the reason this plan counts on selling and buying again.

Three times no treaty, and three times a consequence.

The tax. The Netherlands has no tax treaty with Costa Rica. Then the main rule of NederlandWereldwijd applies: the Netherlands has the right to tax. So your AOW, your occupational pension and your government pension stay taxed in the Netherlands, and because you live outside the EU usually without the tax credits. Costa Rica taxes only income from a Costa Rican source, so it taxes nothing on your Dutch income.

The AOW itself. Costa Rica isn't among the 36 countries with a social security treaty. The AOW comes along up to the married rate: for a couple nothing changes, whoever goes alone falls back from seventy to fifty percent of the minimum wage.

The healthcare. Costa Rica isn't on the CAK list: your basic insurance ends on deregistration and an own policy is the system. But unlike in Panama or Mexico something comes on top: as a resident you have to affiliate to the Caja, the state system, against a percentage of your declared income.

Your AOW accrual stops — that's something different from the payment. What you've built up until you leave stays yours. But as soon as you're no longer insured in the Netherlands — for most emigrants the moment of departure — you build up nothing more, and every year until your AOW age costs you 2% of your later AOW. Voluntary continued insurance with the SVB is possible, for ten years at most, but the application has to be in within one year of your insurance ending; after that the door is closed. If you already receive AOW, this no longer applies.

Holiday Costa Rica is the coast; living Costa Rica is for most Dutch people the Central Valley around San José, Escazú, Santa Ana, Heredia, Grecia and Atenas: eternal spring, the hospitals, the airport. The coast of Guanacaste has the sun and the prices of Florida; the Caribbean side the rain and the quiet.

Factor into that choice what doesn't stand out on holiday. The rainy season runs from May to November and is in the mountains a different country than in dry Guanacaste. The good hospitals are in the valley. And on the coast a boundary applies that applies nowhere else: the first two hundred metres from the high-water line belong to the state — see phase 5.

On the application side Costa Rica is cheap in fees and expensive in lawyer: almost everyone has the file lodged by a Costa Rican lawyer, and that is the largest item before departure. After that come the Caja contribution that returns every month, the move across the ocean with duties on the household goods, and the car — which you don't take along here.

With Costa Rica this conversation has a sum you have to see together: whoever goes alone gives up twenty percentage points of AOW, and whoever is older has to be insured twice — the own policy because the Caja isn't everything, and the Caja because the law demands it. Work that out before you decide, not after.

And discuss the distance and the pace. Eleven to thirteen hours' flying with a connection, seven or eight hours' time difference, and a government that counts in months where the Netherlands counts in weeks.

From here everything counts back. The tightest clock of this journey is the 180 days you get as a tourist and within which your application has to be lodged. The longest is the waiting time for the decision — months, sometimes more than a year — and that decides when your card, your Caja and your driving licence can happen.