Is there a separate capital gains tax?
Paraguay capital gains tax does not exist as a separate instrument. Law 6380/2019 has no dedicated capital gains chapter, so gains are taxed as ordinary income through three different taxes, and the rate depends on who sells: a flat 8% for a resident individual, 10% for a Paraguayan company, and 15% standard for a non-resident, compressed to an effective 4.5% plus 1.5% IVA on real estate settled by a notary.
No Separate Tax: Three Lenses, Three Rates
Paraguay capital gains tax is not the name of any tax you will find on a Paraguayan form. Law 6380/2019 taxes the gain as income, and which income tax applies depends on the seller, not on the asset class. A resident individual, a Paraguayan company, and a non-resident can sell the same apartment on the same afternoon and pay three different amounts. Most summaries blur this. This page keeps the three lenses separate and cites the article behind every number.
| Seller | Tax | Rate | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resident individual | IRP, capital income | Flat 8% of the gain | Article 60, Law 6380/2019 |
| Paraguayan company, or a foreign company with a Paraguayan permanent establishment | IRE | 10% | Article 21, Law 6380/2019 |
| Non-resident | INR | 15% standard; effective 4.5% income tax plus 1.5% IVA on real estate | Article 76, Law 6380/2019; RG 42/2020, Article 3 |
The 8% rate in Article 60 applies to every category of capital income listed in Article 57, and where the law appoints a withholding agent, the payment is single and final under Article 61. The rate does not scale with the size of the gain and does not stack onto your other income; capital income settles in its own bucket, separate from service income. For the full individual picture, see our guide to personal income tax rates.
The company lens costs more than its headline 10%. A gain realized inside a company with Paraguayan domicile or a permanent establishment enters IRE at 10% under Article 21, and the profit faces the IDU again at 8% when the company distributes it to a resident owner under Article 43. Selling personally at 8% and selling through a company at 10% plus 8% on extraction are different transactions with different bills.
What Counts as a Paraguay-Situs Asset
Article 57 of Law 6380/2019 lists eleven categories of capital income, and Articles 58 through 61 set the timing, the rate and the withholding for all of them. The list is the gatekeeper for the 8% lens: if your gain does not fall into one of the eleven buckets, the individual tax does not see it.
| Numeral | What it captures |
|---|---|
| 1 | Dividends and profits from resident entities, where not already caught by the IDU |
| 2 | Interest and yields paid by residents: deposits, financial instruments, loans, securities, leasing, factoring |
| 3 | Income from transparent legal structures, such as trusts and investment funds |
| 4 | Royalties for rights used inside Paraguay |
| 5 | Gains on shares or participations in any entity, resident or not, that confer enjoyment rights over property located in Paraguay |
| 6 | Gains, leases and rights over real estate |
| 7 | Gains on movable property located in Paraguay |
| 8 | Lottery and bingo prizes offered in Paraguay |
| 9 | Gratuitous incorporation into your patrimony of Paraguay-situs goods or Paraguay-exercisable rights |
| 10 | Redemption of resident-entity shares above contributed capital |
| 11 | Unjustified increases in wealth |
Numeral 5 is the one that decides foreign-stock questions, and it is routinely misquoted. It does not tax foreign shares because the broker is in Paraguay; no article of the law says that. The operative words are that gains from transferring rights, shares or participations in an entity, resident or not, are taxable when those rights give the holder enjoyment of movable or immovable property situated in Paraguay. The test looks through the entity to the asset. A share in a Delaware holding company whose only asset is an Asunción apartment is taxable at 8%; a share in a US index fund holding no Paraguayan property is not, at any broker.
Numeral 2 has a guardrail worth knowing, because it is the bucket where bank interest would sit if it were taxable. Interest paid by resident payers is capital income, but Article 56 numeral 12 expressly exempts interest on deposits and placements with banks and finance entities regulated in Paraguay, and with savings and credit cooperatives. Ordinary Paraguayan bank interest is therefore exempt for individuals, not an 8% capital gain. What the 8% can reach is deposit-type interest from payers outside that regulated circle, such as a private loan to an individual or a company.
The same logic runs through the source article for individuals, Article 48, which is strictly territorial: capital yields are Paraguayan-source only when the placement is made in Paraguay. There is no individual-level sweep of foreign investment income. That is why most foreign portfolios sit outside the 8%, a mechanism explained in full in our territorial tax guide.
Real Estate: the Notary Settles It at the Deed
Real estate is the one asset class where the mechanics are fixed in advance. General Resolution 42/2020 of 9 March 2020 appoints the intervening notary (escribano) as withholding agent, and the notary withholds 100% of the tax at the escritura. You do not file first and pay later; the tax leaves the transaction itself. The covered acts under Article 2 are the sale, payment in kind (dación en pago), swap (permuta), and the onerous cession of rights, including hereditary shares.
For a resident individual, Article 2 sets the base at a presumed 30% of the transfer value and applies the 8% capital rate to it. That is 2.4% of the price, withheld at the notary's office. Article 6 offers the alternative: elect real-gain taxation in the deed, and the tax becomes 8% of the sale price minus the documented purchase price minus itemized expenses, which the resolution lists as notary fees, taxes, registration fees, management and advertising costs, and intermediary fees. The election wins whenever your actual gain is below 30% of the price. Either way the settlement is final: Article 61 of the law provides for perceptions on real-estate transfers, collecting the tax at the source.
For a non-resident seller, Article 3 splits the withholding in two: IVA, the Paraguayan VAT, at 5% on the 30% base, which is 1.5% of the price, plus INR at 15% on the 30% base excluding IVA, which is 4.5%. Article 8 adds the arithmetic when the agreed price is IVA-inclusive: divide the price by 1.015 before applying the 30% base.
| Seller | Withholding at the deed | Effective cost |
|---|---|---|
| Resident individual, presumed base | IRP 8% on 30% of the price | 2.4% of the price |
| Resident individual, real-gain election | IRP 8% on price minus documented cost and allowed expenses | 8% of the true gain |
| Non-resident | IVA 5% on the 30% base, plus INR 15% on the 30% base excluding IVA | About 6% of the price |
One carve-out: sales of subdivided lots run under General Resolution 35/2020 instead, where the loteadora, the property administrator or the mandate company withholds, and Article 10 of that resolution expressly excludes those sales from notary retention. None of this is the recurring cost of owning property; municipal and rural property taxes are a separate annual bill, covered in our property taxes guide.
Selling Shares Is Not Receiving Dividends
The IDU is the tax most often mistaken for a capital gains tax, and it is not one. Articles 40 through 46 of Law 6380/2019 tax distributions: utilities, dividends or yields put at the disposal of owners by entities constituted in Paraguay, including permanent establishments of foreign entities operating locally. The taxable event is the distribution, not the sale. When a Paraguayan company pays you profits, Article 43 withholds 8% if you reside in Paraguay and 15% if you do not, as a single and definitive payment under Article 41.
Selling is different. A resident individual who sells shares in a Paraguayan company realizes a capital gain under Article 57 numeral 5, at the flat 8%. A redemption above contributed capital is its own category, numeral 10, also at 8%. Distributions from foreign companies are outside the IDU altogether, because Article 40 reaches only entities constituted in Paraguay and their local permanent establishments; for the individual recipient, the territorial source rule keeps them out of the IRP as well. Numeral 1 of Article 57 exists to prevent a double charge: dividends from resident entities that already bore the IDU are excluded from the 8% capital bucket. The full distribution mechanics, including the 15% non-resident withholding, are in our dividends guide.
Crypto: 10% on the Increase, No IVA on the Disposal
Crypto has one binding position, Consulta Vinculante 582, and it settles both halves of the question. The consultation classifies cryptocurrency as a private security (valor privado). The patrimonial increase from holding crypto or from buying and selling it is taxed at the 10% IRE rate, with the consultation citing Article 21 of Law 6380/2019. The disposal itself is exempt from the IVA, because Article 100 numeral 1 inciso a) of the same law exempts the transfer of private securities and the consultation applies it as written.
You will read that crypto disposals carry no income tax in Paraguay because of a 2025 law about securities markets and products. That law contains no income-tax provision and does not override the consultation. The operative position is CV 582: 10% on the patrimonial increase, IVA-exempt disposal. A reporting layer now rides on top: under General Resolution 47/2026, crypto operations are reportable to DNIT, with the first filing due in March 2027 for fiscal year 2026. The reporting rules and the full analysis are in our crypto tax guide.
Cost Basis and the Gift Deferral
Cost basis in Paraguay is documentation, not doctrine. On real estate, the default is the presumed 30% base, and the real-gain election in Article 6 of RG 42/2020 is only as good as the paper behind it: the purchase deed, plus invoices for the notary fees, taxes, registration, management and advertising, and intermediary commissions the resolution allows. Without documents, the 2.4% charge on the presumed base is what you pay, and whether that is cheaper than the real gain depends on how much gain the sale actually contains.
Gifts run on a different clock. Article 57 numeral 9 of Law 6380/2019 makes the gratuitous incorporation of Paraguayan-situs goods, or of rights to be fulfilled or exercised in Paraguay, taxable capital income. Article 58 numeral 2 then defers it: the rent is imputed at the moment the recipient alienates the property. Read together, the two articles mean no tax is due when the gift happens. The 8% lands later, when the recipient sells.
So gifting does not erase the gain; it postpones it and moves it onto the recipient. An estate under partition is itself an IRP taxpayer until the assets are adjudicated, under Article 50, with heirs solidarily liable for the estate's obligations in proportion to their shares. Keep the gratuitous origin documented in every case. Wealth that appears without explanation falls under Article 57 numeral 11 as an unjustified patrimonial increase, and the final paragraph of Article 58 imputes it to the year before detection.
The Non-Resident Lens
If you are not a Paraguay tax resident, the INR takes over, and the headline rate is 15% on Paraguay-source capital income. The real estate path compresses it: Article 3 of RG 42/2020 withholds the INR on the 30% presumed base, an effective 4.5%, alongside the 1.5% IVA. Distributions from Paraguayan entities to non-resident owners carry the 15% IDU withholding under Article 43. The look-through rule of Article 57 numeral 5 applies to sellers resident or not: shares in a foreign entity holding Paraguayan property are in scope even when the seller lives abroad. The rates, the registration and the withholding mechanics are laid out in our non-resident tax guide.
Two Worked Examples
A resident sells an Asunción apartment
A resident individual sells an apartment for $200,000. Under the presumed base, 30% of the price is $60,000, and 8% of that is $4,800, which is 2.4% of the price, withheld by the notary at the escritura. She bought the apartment for $150,000 and has $6,000 of documented expenses from the allowed list. The real gain is $200,000 minus $156,000, or $44,000, and 8% of that is $3,520. Electing real-gain taxation in the deed saves $1,280 on this sale. The election is recorded in the deed itself, which is why the purchase paperwork is worth keeping for as long as you own the asset.
A resident sells a US ETF
The same resident sells $100,000 of a US-listed ETF she bought for $80,000, a $20,000 gain, through a US broker. The fund is a foreign entity holding no Paraguayan property, the placement was not made in Paraguay, and nothing was paid to her from Paraguay. Article 48 keeps the gain out of the IRP entirely, wherever the broker sits. Two variations change the answer. If the ETF sits inside her company with Paraguayan domicile or a permanent establishment, the company's foreign investment income is Paraguayan-source under Article 6 numeral 4 and enters IRE at 10%, with an Article 134 credit for foreign tax already paid. And if instead of the ETF she sells shares in a foreign holding company whose only asset is a Paraguayan farm, Article 57 numeral 5 looks through the entity and taxes the gain at 8% in her personal return, no matter where the shares are custodied. For the company variation, the entity-separation rules in our US LLC guide decide the lens before any rate does.
How We Help
Which lens applies to your sale is a paper question with a number attached, and the number is knowable before you sign. Bring the deed, the purchase contract and the expense invoices, and choosing between the presumed base and the real gain becomes arithmetic, not judgment. If the sale runs through a company, the structure decides the rate before the asset does, and unwinding the wrong lens after the escritura is expensive. We price the tax first, then keep the filing trail clean.
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