Bogotá Should Simplify Industry Tax to Boost Revenues, OECD Says

Bogotá’s industry and commerce tax needs to be simplified and made more progressive to boost revenue and improve equity across economic sectors, an OECD report said Wednesday.

The Colombian capital’s main tax, known as ICA, has 14 rates across different sectors, which leads to complexity, heightened compliance costs, and reduced transparency, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report.

The tax’s complexity could “burden low-margin industries while favouring profitable ones,” and its “gross-income-based structure creates distortions,” the report said.

• The ICA, which accounts for nearly half of Bogotá’s tax revenues since 2021, “could ...