The Short Answer
How to pay taxes in Paraguay is a four-step loop that repeats every month: check what DNIT says you owe in Marangatu, file the return, generate a boleta de pago, and pay that boleta the same day at a bank app or a boca de cobranza. No boleta, no payment. Every channel in the country reads the boleta's own number, and the slip expires at midnight Paraguay time on the day it was issued. You can run the whole loop from abroad, but only through a funded Paraguayan account or a person on the ground.
How to Pay Taxes in Paraguay: The Four-Step Loop
How to pay taxes in Paraguay is a mechanical question with a short answer. DNIT, the national tax office, does not collect tax the way most countries do, through a transfer or a card charge. It reads one document. The boleta de pago is an official payment slip that carries your RUC, the tax, the period, the amount, and its own number, and that number is the only thing any payment channel in Paraguay accepts. So the routine is always the same: file first, generate the slip, pay the slip.
- Check the source of truth. Log in to Marangatu and open "Visión Integral del Contribuyente," the taxpayer overview: whether you owe, how much, and which period. That number outranks your memory.
- File the return. Monthly IVA goes in on Form 120 under obligation 211, IVA General, even in a month with zero movement. Filing and paying are separate acts; the return comes first.
- Generate the boleta de pago. Marangatu produces it from your filed declaration, and DNIT's website also has a no-login generator for the days the password will not cooperate.
- Pay it the same day. A Paraguayan bank app, a boca de cobranza counter, or any authorized collector. Keep the receipt; it is your proof of payment.
Two cautions keep the loop safe. A payment posts when the collecting entity processes it, not when you tap confirm. And the boleta is only valid on the day it was issued, so never generate slips in advance.
What You Need Before You Start
An active RUC. The boleta carries your RUC, so no RUC means no slip, and an inactive RUC does not pause the monthly duties either. If you have not registered yet, start with our RUC registration guide; everything on this page happens downstream of it.
A Marangatu access key. Your RUC plus a password gets you into the system where returns are filed and boletas are generated. DNIT also allows formal delegation to a registered accountant, which is how many busy residents run the whole loop.
The authoritative balance. Before you pay anything, read what DNIT's system says you owe: debt, amount, and period. Do this even when you are sure you are compliant, especially then; it takes two minutes and it is the most useful habit around your RUC.
One more monthly duty sits alongside the payment. Under RG 90/2021, IVA taxpayers confirm the registro de comprobantes (obligation 955), the electronic voucher register, in Marangatu every month, on the same calendar. It is a separate confirmation from the return and the payment, and skipping it draws its own fine.
Step by Step: Generating the Boleta de Pago
You never send money to the tax office. You generate a slip, hand its number to a payment channel, and the channel settles with DNIT. Here is the click path, in both variants.
- File the declaration. In Marangatu, go to Declaraciones Juradas y Pagos, then Presentar Declaración. For monthly IVA that is Form 120 under obligation 211, IVA General. If the return shows nothing due, the filing itself is the compliance act and there is no tax to pay that month.
- Generate the boleta from the declaration. After presenting, use Generar Boleta de Pago. The slip inherits the RUC, the tax, the period, and the amount, and receives its own number.
- Or use the no-login generator. On dnit.gov.py, open the online services that work without an access key and choose Generar Boleta de Pago. Enter your RUC and its check digit (the number after the dash), your date of birth or the company's incorporation date, the obligation you are paying, and the amount. The system fills in the name and issues the slip. This is the standing workaround for a lost password, the most common reason a boleta never gets generated at all.
- Print it or keep it on your phone. The counter needs the number, not the paper, but the slip is what documents what you paid.
Now the detail that catches almost everyone: a boleta expires at midnight, Paraguay time, on the day it was issued. A slip generated on Tuesday night is dead on Wednesday morning, and the counter will reject it as if you had mistyped the number. Nothing went wrong; generate a new one. It takes seconds and costs nothing. The rule is to generate the boleta on the day you will actually pay it, never before.
Two smaller notes. Payment timing follows the collector's business hours, not the portal's: a slip paid at 11:55 pm on the last day of the month may not settle until the next business day, so leave a day of slack. And fines are paid by boleta too, under their own obligation codes, so a tax slip and a fine slip are always separate documents.
Where to Pay: Bank Apps, Bocas de Cobranza, and the DNIT Map
With the slip in hand you have two routes: online through a Paraguayan bank, or in person at a collection counter. Both read the same boleta number.
| Channel | What you bring | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| Bank app (any Paraguayan bank's app) | Boleta number, funded account | About 90 seconds from anywhere; posts to Marangatu automatically |
| Boca de cobranza counter (Aquí Pago, Practipago) | Boleta number, on paper or phone | Cash at supermarkets, pharmacies, and gas stations; the receipt is your proof |
| Card at the counter (Infonet network) | Boleta number, card | Works in person only, not online |
| Any point on DNIT's collection map | Boleta number | DNIT publishes a map of every authorized collection point |
The bank app route: open your banking app, find the section for paying taxes or services, select the tax authority (some banks still list it under its old name, SET), type the boleta number, and confirm. It posts to Marangatu on its own and takes about 90 seconds from anywhere in the world, on one condition: a Paraguayan account with money in it.
The counter route: bocas de cobranza are authorized payment counters inside supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations, and corner shops. You hand over the number, pay the cash, and get a receipt; keep it, it is your proof of payment. This is the route to remember in your first months, before you have a bank account: nobody is blocked from paying national taxes, because the same counter that tops up phone credit takes your boleta.
One banking limit matters for tax-sized flows. A cuenta básica, the remotely opened entry-level account, moves roughly Gs 9 million per month, three minimum wages: enough for most tax bills, not for every business volume. Which account can receive international transfers at all is covered in our cuenta básica vs full account comparison.
The Deadline Rule, in One Paragraph
Each monthly obligation is due the following month on a fixed day set by the last digit of your RUC under DNIT's calendario perpetuo: for natural persons, the digit is the last digit of the cédula number inside the RUC, ignoring the check digit after the dash. Digit 0 files on the 7th, 1 on the 9th, 2 on the 11th, and the pattern steps by two days to digit 9 on the 25th; a date that lands on a weekend or holiday moves to the next business day for that digit only, without moving anyone else's. That is the entire rule. The full month-by-month table, the no-movement return rules, and the annual deadlines live on our filing calendar and no-movement returns page.
Paying IVA While Outside Paraguay
Every channel above is domestic. Foreign cards do not connect to DNIT's payment rails, and the boleta number only means something inside the Paraguayan network. So paying while abroad is really two problems: paying the slip, which any Paraguayan bank app does from anywhere, and putting guaraníes into that account, which is the actual obstacle.
Start with what does not work. An international wire into a cuenta básica is not possible at all. Into a full account it is possible, but slow, expensive, and bureaucratic: the bank wants documented proof of where the money comes from before releasing it, and in practice wants that paperwork delivered by hand.
What works is the remittance lane, because the last leg is domestic. You send euros, dollars, or crypto to a remittance app, and the app pushes an ordinary local guaraní transfer into your Paraguayan account from its own local account. Two operators run confirmed, live send-to-Paraguay corridors as of 2026-09-11: Global66 (CLP and ARS corridors into guaraníes, among others) and Remitly (USD into guaraníes from the United States, fundable by debit or credit card). Transfers typically land within two to three business days, sometimes within minutes. The tradeoffs: the exchange rate is not always the best available, and per-transaction limits vary by corridor and operator, so several smaller transfers usually beat one large one.
Wise deserves its own paragraph, because it is half a solution. Wise operates a live USD to PYG corridor and can deliver guaraníes to a Paraguayan account, but its own help center (article 2813542, as of 2026-09-11) shows Paraguay is not among the countries whose residents can hold money in a Wise account. Wise frames that list by where you live, not by tax residency, and it can change without much notice. In practice: someone abroad can send to you through Wise, but a Paraguay-based user cannot really hold a Wise account of their own.
If you are physically in the country, the ATM loop is underrated: withdraw guaraníes from an international card, then deposit the same cash into your Paraguayan account, sometimes at the same machine. Fees and daily limits apply, but there is no intermediary and no paperwork. The crypto route, USDT to a local exchange or a trusted intermediary who deposits guaraníes, also works; agree the fee and the rate first. And the simplest lane of all: anyone in Paraguay can pay your boleta in cash with nothing but the number.
What Happens If You Pay Late
The sanctions are specific, published in law, and almost never quoted with their numbers. Here is the full stack, articles included.
| What you face | When it applies | Legal basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contravención fine | Return filed late or not filed, even at zero | Art. 176, Law 125/1991 | Gs 50,000 to 1,000,000 per return; ceiling decree-adjusted (at least Gs 1,221,000) |
| Mora surcharge | Tax due and unpaid | Art. 171, Law 125/1991 | 4% to 14% of the unpaid tax |
| Interest, voluntary stage | You settle before an audit finds it | Decreto 6904/2005, Art. 3 | 1.5% per month, calculated day by day |
| Interest, collection stage | Audit finding or legal collection | Decreto 6904/2005, Art. 3 | 2.5% per month |
| Payment plan | Debt split into installments | Decreto 6478/2026 | 1.4% per month, from September 2026 |
| Invoice emission block | 5 business days past a missed retention or IVA deadline | RG 61/2015, Art. 9 | Marangatu stops issuing your invoicing documents |
The fixed fine first. A late or missing return is a contravención under Article 176 of Law 125/1991, fined at Gs 50,000 to Gs 1,000,000 per return, calibrated by the circumstances of Article 175. The ceiling is adjusted upward by decree under Article 179; the last adjustment verifiable in a decree text, Decreto 1256/2014, put it at Gs 1,221,000, and later decrees have pushed it higher, so treat that figure as a floor. If you ever see the fine attributed to "Article 126," that article is a cattle transport rule from the repealed books of the same law; the fine is Article 176.
Then the money. Unpaid tax is in mora under Article 171: a surcharge of 4% to 14% of the tax, plus monthly interest whose rate the Executive sets by decree. Decreto 6904/2005, Article 3, fixes the two tiers: 1.5% per month, calculated day by day, while you settle spontaneously; 2.5% per month once the debt was detected in an audit or is under apremio, the coercive collection track run by the Abogacía del Tesoro under Articles 229 to 232 of the same law. Interest does not double at that stage, and no Paraguayan rule sets a higher monthly rate, so if a guide quotes you a bigger daily rate, it is quoting something that is not in the decree. In hardship cases the debt can be split into installments, and from September 2026, Decreto 6478/2026 cut the interest on those plans to 1.4% per month.
The pieces stack under Article 178: the fixed fine, the surcharge, and the interest all run together on the same debt. Two more consequences arrive without any fine at all. Five business days after you miss a retention or IVA filing or payment deadline, Resolución General 61/2015, Article 9, stops Marangatu from issuing your timbred invoicing documents, which for anyone billing clients is the sanction that hurts first. And the monthly voucher register (obligation 955) draws its own contravención fine when it goes unconfirmed; it is due monthly, not every 60 days. The full machinery, including how DNIT chases a debt once it goes unpaid, is on our tax compliance page.
Marangatu vs Marandú: Two Different Systems
The names sound alike and the systems are different things. Marangatu is DNIT's tax management system: the portal you log into with your RUC, where returns are filed, the voucher register is confirmed, boletas are generated, and your cuenta corriente (account statement) lives. DNIT itself was created in 2023 by Ley 7143/2023, which merged the old SET with customs. That merger is why older guides still say SET and older links still point at set.gov.py; the current entry point is dnit.gov.py.
Marandú, created by Resolución General 65/2015, is the electronic notification mailbox inside Marangatu. Determinations, fines, document requests, and appeal decisions are served there, and a notice is legally effective the business day after it is sent, whether or not you log in to read it. Reading is not what makes the notice valid; reading is what unlocks the rest of Marangatu, because an unread notification blocks the system's main menu. Before concluding that DNIT never said anything, check the mailbox: that is where it said it.
How We Help
The loop is learnable, and most of our clients run it themselves. The rest send it to us: we file the return, generate the boleta before it can expire, and pay it, month by month or from a prepaid balance topped up in advance, with every deposit and payment dated in your portal. Clients abroad settle in dollars by card from anywhere, with no Paraguayan account and no expiring slip on their side. A clean monthly record is also what later supports the residency paperwork, covered in our tax residency guide. If you would rather never think about midnight expiries again, the service is below.
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