Household goods to Colombia: no exemption, but one flat rate of 15%

Your household goods may enter Colombia without an import licence, but you do pay for them. On the menaje doméstico, the household effects of someone coming to live in Colombia, the DIAN charges one tributo único of 15% of the value. That is in article 284 of the customs decree, Decreto 1165 of 2019, based on a law from 1998. There is no exemption for emigrants; the exemption you sometimes come across is for Colombians who return.

Rule	What it says	Article
Who	anyone who lived abroad for at least 24 months of the last three years and comes to live in Colombia	decree, art. 3 and 279
Licence	no registration or import licence needed	art. 279
Rate	one rate of 15% of the value	art. 284
Arrival of the shipment	between 1 month before and 4 months after your arrival	art. 282
Declaration	not before your own arrival; shipment in your name	art. 283
Number	one shipment of household goods per family, through one customs office	art. 283
Next shipment	only 5 years after the release of the first	art. 279

Who may import household goods?

The decree names the residente en el exterior: someone who lived abroad for at least 24 months, continuous or not, in the three years before arrival. Anyone leaving the Netherlands after years of living there meets that. You must come to Colombia to live there.

The rules do not name a visa as a condition, but they do require that you come to live there. Ask the forwarder which documents the DIAN at your port wants to see for this, and keep your visa and your cédula at hand.

What counts as household goods?

The DIAN lists in its ABC:

• furniture to furnish a house, according to the size of the family;
• household appliances, for kitchen, cleaning, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, entertainment, personal care and fitness, and computers;
• personal effects that did not come as luggage;
• sports articles, up to six of the same kind, including bicycles without a motor;
• decoration and certified art, as long as it is not Colombian cultural heritage.

Anything not covered goes through an ordinary import declaration, with the ordinary duties. A car or motorcycle is never included: means of transport are excluded. See car and driving licence.

The goods must have been bought during the time you lived abroad, and shipped from the country where you lived. Only for appliances that do not work in Colombia because of a different voltage may you show another country of origin.