Wealth Tax in Colombia 2026: Who Has to Pay It (And Why the Number You’ve Seen Might Be Wrong)

Reviewed by Mauricio Naranjo, Director of Tax and Accounting at Nexo Legal. Specialist in Tax Law (Universidad Externado de Colombia), Master’s in Procedural Law.

Quick answer: Wealth tax Colombia 2026 applies to individuals — residents and non-residents alike — whose net worth reaches 72,000 UVT (approximately COP $3,770,928,000, or about US$1.1 million). If you’ve seen a lower figure of 40,000 UVT somewhere, that number came from a decree the Constitutional Court struck down in April 2026 — it no longer applies. Rates run from 0.5% up to 1.5%, calculated by bracket, and for property owners the second 2026 installment is due September 14.

Table of Contents

1. Wealth Tax Colombia: The Basics
2. Who Must Pay in 2026: The 72,000 UVT Threshold
3. The Number You’ve Probably Seen Is Wrong: What the Court Actually Ruled
4. Does It Apply to Foreigners and Non-Residents?
5. How Much You Actually Pay
6. A Concrete Example: How a Property Purchase Can Push You Over the Threshold
7. What Counts as Wealth — Included and Excluded Assets
8. When and How It’s Paid — the September 14 Second Installment
9. Personal Wealth Tax vs. the Corporate Version — Don’t Confuse the Two
10. What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
11. Common Mistakes Foreign Owners Make
12. FAQ

Wealth Tax Colombia: The Basics

The wealth tax (impuesto al patrimonio) taxes what you own, not what you earn. It’s calculated on your net worth — total assets minus debts — as of January 1 of the tax year. That base includes:

• Real estate (houses, apartments, land)
• Bank accounts
• Investments (stocks, crypto, and similar holdings)
• Vehicles

Debts are subtracted to arrive at your patrimonio líquido (net worth), which is the actual tax base. It has nothing to do with your salary or business income — a retiree with no Colombian income but a paid-off apartment above the threshold can still owe it.

Who Must Pay in 2026: The 72,000 UVT Threshold

For the 2026 tax year, individuals — resident or not — whose net worth equals or exceeds 72,000 UVT must file and pay the wealth tax. With the 2026 UVT set at COP $52,374, that works out to:

72,000 × $52,374 = COP $3,770,928,000 (roughly US$1.1 million at current exchange rates)

This threshold comes from Ley 2277 de 2022, the law that turned the wealth tax into a permanent feature of the Colombian tax system starting with the 2023 tax year. It has not changed for 2026 — despite what you may have read elsewhere. That “despite” is worth its own section, because it’s the single most common source of confusion in every wealth tax article published so far this year.

The Number You’ve Probably Seen Is Wrong: What the Court Actually Ruled

If you’ve searched this topic recently, you’ve likely come across a lower threshold: 40,000 UVT, roughly COP $2,094,960,000. Several tax and accounting blogs still present that number as the current 2026 rule. It isn’t — and here’s exactly why.

In December 2025, under a state of economic emergency (Decreto 1390 de 2025), the outgoing government issued Decreto Legislativo 1474 de 2025, an emergency tax package that included lowering the wealth tax threshold from 72,000 to 40,000 UVT — a change that would have roughly tripled the number of people owing the tax, from about 32,000 to more than 105,000 taxpayers.

That package didn’t survive review. In Sentencia C-079 de 2026, the Constitutional Court declared Decreto 1390 de 2025 unconstitutional — and because Decreto 1474 depended entirely on that emergency declaration for its legal authority, the tax measures inside it, including the 40,000 UVT threshold, fell with it. The Court went further: it ordered that DIAN not collect, calculate, or enforce any of those measures, and that any amounts already paid under the decree (covering late December 2025 through January 2026) be refunded to the taxpayers who paid them.

The practical result: the wealth tax threshold reverted to 72,000 UVT under Ley 2277/2022, the version that was actually still in force all along. If a source is telling you 40,000 UVT applies for 2026, it’s describing a rule that no longer exists.

This is separate from a different, more recent conversation: the current government has floated eliminating the wealth tax entirely as part of a broader tax reform expected later in 2026. As of this writing, that proposal has not been formally filed in Congress — it’s a policy announcement, not law. We’ll cover that reform separately once it’s actually introduced. For now, plan around the threshold that’s legally in effect: 72,000 UVT.

Does It Apply to Foreigners and Non-Residents?

Yes — and this is where many foreign property owners get caught off guard. Colombia’s wealth tax follows the same residency logic as income tax:

• Tax residents (generally, anyone spending more than 183 days in Colombia within a 365-day period) must declare their global net worth — assets held anywhere in the world count toward the 72,000 UVT threshold.
• Non-residents only count assets located in Colombia — a property, a bank account, an investment held through a Colombian entity.

This matters most for foreigners who bought real estate in Medellín, Bogotá, or along the coast without expecting to owe anything beyond property tax (impuesto predial). If the value of that property — combined with any other Colombian-based assets you hold — pushes your Colombian net worth over the threshold, the wealth tax applies to you regardless of your visa status or how much time you actually spend in the country.

How Much You Actually Pay

The wealth tax is progressive: you pay increasing rates on brackets of net worth above the threshold, not a single flat rate on your entire wealth. Under Ley 2277/2022, rates for individuals range from 0.5% at the lower end to 1.5% for the highest net worth brackets.

Because you’re taxed by bracket — the same way income tax brackets work — a net worth just above 72,000 UVT is taxed far more lightly than a net worth several multiples above it. If your situation is anywhere near the threshold, this is a case where the exact bracket calculation genuinely changes the outcome enough that it’s worth having a tax advisor run your specific numbers rather than estimating from a general rate range.

A Concrete Example: How a Property Purchase Can Push You Over the Threshold

Here’s where this stops being an abstract tax question for a lot of foreign buyers. Say a non-resident foreigner buys an apartment in Medellín’s Poblado neighborhood for COP $2,200,000,000 and also keeps a Colombian bank account with COP $150,000,000 for local expenses. On their own, neither figure looks close to the 72,000 UVT threshold (COP $3,770,928,000). But run the math for a tax resident — someone who has crossed the 183-day mark and must count global net worth, not just Colombian assets:

• Colombian apartment: COP $2,200,000,000
• Colombian bank account: COP $150,000,000
• Investment portfolio held abroad: COP $1,000,000,000
• Vehicle: COP $120,000,000
• Outstanding mortgage debt on the apartment: −COP $400,000,000

Net worth: COP $3,070,000,000 — still under the 72,000 UVT line in this example, but close enough that a modest increase in any asset’s valuation, or paying down that mortgage, could cross it the following year. This is precisely the calculation foreign buyers rarely run before closing on a property: the purchase itself may not trigger the wealth tax, but it changes how close you sit to the threshold going forward, and property values in Colombia’s main cities have moved enough in recent years that a purchase made comfortably under the line can end up near it within a couple of tax years.

What Counts as Wealth — Included and Excluded Assets

Included in the tax base:
– Real estate (houses, apartments, land, both in Colombia and abroad for residents)
– Money in bank accounts
– Investments (stocks, funds, cryptocurrency)
– Vehicles

Possible exclusions:
– A portion of your primary residence, up to a limit set by DIAN’s regulations
– Certain financial assets, depending on how they’re structured

Always subtracted:
– Outstanding debts, which reduce gross assets down to net worth (patrimonio líquido) — the actual number compared against the 72,000 UVT threshold

When and How It’s Paid — the September 14 Second Installment

The wealth tax is calculated based on your net worth as of January 1, 2026, and filed according to the DIAN tax calendar. For taxpayers who chose to split their payment, the second installment falls due September 14, 2026 — the same date DIAN has grouped with several other September obligations (VAT on foreign digital services, the carbon tax, and the tax on ultra-processed beverages, among others).

If you’re a foreign property owner who filed earlier this year and elected to pay in two installments, this is the date to have on your calendar this month — separate from, and in addition to, the ordinary income tax deadlines that run through late September for individuals filing by cédula digit.

Personal Wealth Tax vs. the Corporate Version — Don’t Confuse the Two

Colombia also applies a separate, temporary wealth tax on legal entities (companies), introduced for 2026 with its own threshold, rates, and rules — it is not the same tax, and it is not what this article covers. If you’re researching the obligation for a Colombian company rather than as an individual property owner or investor, see our dedicated guide to the corporate wealth tax for companies in Colombia. The two taxes can both apply in the same year to the same person if you own property personally and hold shares in a Colombian company above its own threshold — they don’t offset each other.

What Happens If You Miss the Deadline

The wealth tax follows the same general penalty framework as other DIAN filings. Missing the filing or payment deadline triggers a late-filing penalty calculated as a percentage of the tax owed for each month or fraction of a month of delay, plus interest on the unpaid amount calculated at DIAN’s official rate. For taxpayers who already filed but are only late on the September 14 second installment, the exposure is smaller — interest accrues only on the unpaid installment, not the full year’s liability — but it still starts accruing from the day after the deadline, not from whenever DIAN eventually notices.

For non-residents who rarely check Colombian tax notifications, this is a genuine risk: a missed second installment can sit accruing interest for months before it surfaces, often when the taxpayer tries to sell the same property that triggered the obligation in the first place and needs a clean tax standing to close.

Common Mistakes Foreign Owners Make

• Assuming only income matters. The wealth tax is triggered by what you own, entirely independent of whether you earned Colombian income that year.
• Forgetting foreign assets count for residents. If you’re a tax resident, your global net worth — not just your Colombian property — is what gets measured against the threshold.
• Citing an outdated threshold. As covered above, 40,000 UVT was struck down by the Constitutional Court in April 2026 — the current, legally valid figure is 72,000 UVT.
• Improperly netting debts. Only real, documented liabilities reduce your gross assets to net worth — informal or undocumented debts won’t hold up under a DIAN review.
• Believing foreign nationality is an automatic exemption. It isn’t. Residency status and the location of your assets — not your passport — determine the obligation.

Talk to a Tax Advisor Before the Next Deadline

Because the threshold changed, reverted, and is now the subject of a separate elimination proposal all within the same year, this is exactly the kind of tax question where a general guide can only take you so far. If you own property in Colombia and aren’t certain where your net worth actually lands relative to the 72,000 UVT threshold — or you’re planning a purchase and want to know in advance whether it will push you over it — our property purchase counsel team can walk through your specific numbers before your next filing deadline, not after.

That review typically covers three things most foreign buyers never get before closing: whether the purchase, combined with what you already hold in Colombia, crosses the 72,000 UVT line; whether you already qualify as a tax resident based on time spent in the country, which changes whether foreign assets count too; and whether splitting your payment into two installments — with the September 14 date this year — makes more sense than paying in full at filing. Getting these three answers before you sign anything is considerably cheaper than correcting a missed filing after the fact.

FAQ

What is the wealth tax threshold in Colombia for 2026?
72,000 UVT, approximately COP $3,770,928,000 (about US$1.1 million). A lower figure of 40,000 UVT circulating online refers to a decree the Constitutional Court struck down in April 2026 (Sentencia C-079/2026) — it no longer applies.

Is the 40,000 UVT threshold still valid?
No. It came from Decreto Legislativo 1474 de 2025, issued under an economic emergency the Constitutional Court later ruled unconstitutional. The tax measures inside that decree, including the lower threshold, fell along with it.

Do foreigners have to pay Colombia’s wealth tax?
Yes, if they are tax residents (worldwide net worth counts) or non-residents with Colombian-located assets — such as real estate — above the threshold.

Is the wealth tax based on income or assets?
Assets. It’s calculated on net worth (total assets minus debts) as of January 1 of the tax year, regardless of how much income you earned.

What is the maximum wealth tax rate?
Up to 1.5% for the highest net worth brackets under Ley 2277/2022, applied progressively by bracket rather than as a flat rate on total wealth.

Is this the same tax that applies to Colombian companies?
No. Companies are subject to a separate, temporary corporate wealth tax with its own threshold and rates — see our guide to the corporate wealth tax if you’re asking on behalf of a business rather than as an individual.

When is the next wealth tax payment due in 2026?
Taxpayers who split their 2026 wealth tax into two installments owe the second one on September 14, 2026.

Published: April 2026 — Updated September 2026 — Nexo Legal

*Sources: Sentencia C-079 de 2026 — Corte Constitucional, reportado por INCP | Inexequibilidad del DL 1474 de 2025 — Rio Consultores | Ley 2277 de 2022, Art. 36 | Calendario Tributario DIAN 2026