I sold a property personally to another person last year and there is definitely capital gains tax to pay. I have had weeks and weeks of meetings and tax advice from KPMG, Deloittes and now another firm, so I am very clued up on this subject.
Key points:
1) For a sale made in 2024 calendar year, you need to declare and pay the tax in 2025 by April. The date of the sale is when you received the cash.
2) If you don't pay the tax, there is an automatic 10% penalty, and then a 4% per month penalty added, and this goes on indefinitely. So in time it could easily amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unless you are leaving DR and never ever intending to come back, this should be a concern.
3) The tax is 25% of the gain for a person-to-person sale. The gain is adjusted by inflation and they take the IPI value as the lower figure, and the sale price as the upper figure. There is an allowance applied for inflation and there is also a law that gives you another exemption which knocks a bit more off the gain.
4) If you have Residencia por Inversion (the investor residency) you get a 50% reduction on the tax bill.
The process is that you will need an accountant to do the calculations. They then go to DGII and file the calculations, their petition has to quote the relevant laws and be set out in a particular way. DGII looks at the calculations and has several meetings with the accountant when they argue about the numbers and finally an agreement is reached. You then get the authority to pay DGII.
As soon as the accountant has filed at DGII the clock stops ticking in terms of penalties and interest if you are filing late. So for example if you sold in 2023 and are filing late, your penalties will stack up until the day the accountant went to DGII.
I have an excellent lawyer / accountant I am now using, having eliminated several who are useless. These guys speak fluent English and are very very quick and efficient. DM me and I will happily make an introduction.