A bill now before the National Assembly would formalize the roughly 13,000 short-stay rentals operating in a legal gray zone — and a separate fiscal bill could touch the tax rate on every booking. Neither is law yet. Both are worth understanding before you buy.
Panama's short-term rental market has operated for years under a rule most hosts don't fully comply with: Law 80 of 2012 bans stays under 45 days inside the Panama District without a public tourism accommodation permit from the Tourism Authority (ATP), with fines from $5,000 to $50,000 per violation. Reporting on the current Assembly debate puts the number of listings operating without that permit at roughly 13,000 — a gap between what the law says and what the market actually does that two separate bills are now trying to close.
Deputy Neftalí Omar Zamora introduced Proyecto de Ley 301, which regulates short-term tourist leasing of residential property directly. Its stated aims, per reporting on the bill: formalize an activity that today operates largely outside the law, establish fair-competition terms with the licensed hotel sector, and strengthen tax enforcement over short-stay lodging. Airbnb's public policy team for Central America and the Caribbean has met with Deputy Zamora on the proposal, reportedly viewing Panama's approach as a possible template for other markets in the region — a signal this is being built as a formalization framework, not a prohibition.
Running in parallel, Panama's Council of Ministers approved sending Proyecto de Ley 30-26 to the National Assembly — a broader update to the Fiscal Code aimed at applying ITBMS (Panama's sales tax) to digital-economy platforms, short-stay lodging services like Airbnb included. This is a distinct legislative track from PL 301: one formalizes the activity, the other addresses how it's taxed.
Neither bill has passed. Both point the same direction: toward a licensed, taxed, professionally operated short-term rental sector — and away from the informal one that currently makes up most of that 13,000-listing gray zone.
Every project we place clients in — Kyte, Passage Amador, Euphoria, The Hub, Uptown, Generation Tower — is either ATP-licensed or professionally operated within the current legal framework. If PL 301 tightens enforcement on the unlicensed majority, licensed inventory doesn't get swept up in that; it becomes the compliant alternative buyers and operators increasingly prefer.
If ITBMS on short-stay bookings does rise, it's a line item on nightly rate calculations — the kind of variable our STR yield calculator already lets you stress-test. It wouldn't change what you paid for the unit or its resale value; it would change net operating income at the margin.
Both bills address the Panama District's 45-day rule specifically. Boquete, Bocas del Toro, Playa Venao and Valle de Antón already operate without that restriction, and neither proposal changes that.
None of this is legal or tax advice, and both bills can still be amended, delayed, or shelved before any vote — Panama's legislative calendar has done all three to real estate-adjacent bills before. What's worth tracking is the direction, not a specific date: formalization and tighter enforcement of the licensing requirement, with the tax question still unresolved. We flag material developments to clients holding or evaluating STR product as they happen, and our existing coverage of the current legal framework is in Short-Term Rentals in Panama: The Legal Framework.