Back in August we flagged that Panama's tourism-incentive framework was quietly being rewritten after its old tax-credit window expired. On September 14, that rewrite — Bill 31-26 — reached the National Assembly. Here's what it actually contains, and where it lines up with what's already for sale.
On August 26, 2026, Panama's Cabinet Council approved Bill 31-26 for submission to the National Assembly; it was formally presented on September 14. The bill consolidates the country's scattered tourism-incentive laws into a single framework and replaces the fiscal-credit model — the one that survived a Supreme Court challenge and a hotel-industry backlash before being repealed in 2022–2023 — with income tax and property tax exemptions instead, running through December 2036.
Sources: La Estrella de Panamá, Panamá América, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Autoridad de Turismo de Panamá (ATP).
The bill folds the incentive provisions previously scattered across Law 80 and its since-repealed amendments into one law, and swaps the old tax-credit mechanism for straightforward income and property tax exemptions instead. It also explicitly aims to spread new lodging investment beyond Panama City, into regions the ATP has flagged as under-developed relative to demand — reducing barriers for new projects, and extending benefits to a broader range of tourism products, not just hotels.
Lodging projects with a minimum $500,000 investment on the Caribbean side — Bocas del Toro among them — qualify for up to 15 years of income tax and property tax exemption, plus import facilities on construction materials and equipment. The richest tier in the bill.
Projects outside Panama City but off the Caribbean coast — the Pacific corridor around Buenaventura, Boquete, Playa Venao, Valle de Antón — qualify for up to 10 years of exemption. Real, meaningful, and still well ahead of what's on offer inside the capital.
The exemption attaches to the qualifying project — typically the developer or operating entity making the $500K+ investment — not automatically to whoever later buys a single unit or lot inside it. Worth asking directly whether the specific property you're evaluating sits inside a registered, qualifying project.
A tax exemption doesn't build a hotel by itself. But a decade-plus of income and property tax relief is exactly the kind of long-dated bet that tends to show up, a few years later, as the amenity floor, the licensed rental program and the developer track record buyers actually diligence.
Two regions in our own portfolio sit squarely inside this bill's geography. Bocas del Toro — Panama's Caribbean archipelago, where our pre-built short-term rental inventory is located — falls inside the top incentive tier if a given project registers under it. Buenaventura, our Pacific coast plots community, sits in the second tier: outside the capital, in a corridor eligible for up to 10 years of exemption on new qualifying development nearby.