Return Ticket from Dominican Republic

Oh Yeah, This Will Cause Quite a Stir

Since unless you look like a doper hippie trouble maker (or an evangelist) there is a 0.000000001% chance the subject will come up (e.g. whether you even HAVE a return plane ticket) when you go to passport control, then I'd not worry too much about it. They have a tax system to collect on the overstay that is only RD$1000 after 5 YEARS staying beyond your tourist card so it is not great concern compared to other countries. Six months I think is like US$4 or $5.

Tip: At Passport Control don't let on you know a word of Spanish, thus no conversation will ensue. OF course if you look like Thalia they might assume you do.

The problem with the return ticket does not arise in the Dominican Republic (they have never ever even mentioned something like that all the times I entered the country). However and the check-in counter of the airport where you board for Santo Domingo they might ask for the return ticket from Santo Domingo.

According to for example Iberia I needed to have a return ticket with a departure date within 3 months from arrival (even though the tourist card that you buy in the DR only permits a 15 days stay and everything more already needs extra paper work).

What I do when I want to go to my home country is that I buy a roundtrip SD-Amsterdam-SD and additionally I buy a ticket SD-Puerto Rico, the latter without any restrictions. As soon as I am back I return that ticket to the airline and they refund the ticket price (even though the last time I did this, they made me buy a ticket that asks for a 50 dollar refund fee.)

Leaving the country indeed is not any problem after having stayed too long. I stayed a 9 months too long and had to pay 10 dollars.

gr. Mauricio