The Tax man will respect bank secrecy, but warns tax dodgers

Santo Domingo.- Internal Taxes (DGII) director Guarocuya Felix said Wednesday that bank secrecy will be respected and the names of people who have some sort of relationship with any financial institution will not be published, in order to collect the new tax on interest from savings, as the tax package stipulates.

He stressed that the DGII will not report the names, just the accounts, and if it detects any suspicious activity by a person, the bank is obliged to provide all information which the Banks Superintendence requires. “But the tax authority has to protect them; the law protects people in that regard."

Tax on interest

Guarocuya clarified that the tax legislation would tax the interest on savings at 10 percent, not for the amount saved. "That’s to say that if you have one million pesos in a financial certificate which gives you 50,000 pesos a year, of that you’d be paying 5,000 pesos, but after an exemption of up to 240,000 pesos annually."

“That means that people who generate up to 20,000 pesos a month will not pay this tax,” the official said, adding that for an individual to receive interest 240,000 pesos per year (or 20,000 per month) they need to have around 4.6 million pesos in the bank.