Chile Forum

Try a competent accountant first ( go by referral and if it all possible, a woman). If all your questions are not answered, then consult a lawyer.If it's retail, it should be fairly easy, meanwhile educate yourself as much as possible. Good luck in your new venture, may prosperity come to you without struggle.

yep, you need to read more about what you want to offer and how to set things up.

Zero is right, setting up a company is expensive in Chile, and takes a while to do.

People can register to issue boletas. They are (I think) classed as "2nd category" and are for professional services. So, people like Doctors, Kinesiologists, Dentists etc will often issue boletas (although they can also form companies and issue facturas). I am a web designer and I issue Boletas.

This page has lots of links to the diferent types of companies and individual workers. You might want to read Profesionales y trabajadores independientes.
http://www.sii.cl/contribuyentes/contribuyentes.htm

As for being able to write off your purchases, for the independent worker, you can do the same, up to 30% of what you earn, ith an upper limit.

When I looked into it I decided not to set up a company as it seemed too expensive and too hard -you have to involve lawyers and $$ here in Chile.

I have found Spencer Global always very helpful for like matters.

Many thanks for the replies. I will investigate the boletas option further and try to find a competent accountant here in Santiago by referral. Perhaps after a lawyer to be sure. If all fails i'll visit a psychiatrist as originally recommended.

The problem with choosing between a lawyer and an accountant is that either of them could be useful or totally incompetent. The most difficult thing is finding one who is actually a professional you can rely on. In Chile there is no professional body that controls the quality of " qualified " accountants. I have personal experience of having tax advice from a tax partner in KPMG, and fortunately I didn´t follow his advice as if I had done, I would have ended up paying a load of tax that fortunately I managed to avoid. My suggestion out of the two, I´d suggest an accountant.

My suggestion would be to use boletas as even though you may have some items which are legitimate business expenses, that hence could be deductible, you should remember that by issuing boletas for honorarios, you can if you want, take a standard deduction for tax purposes of 30% of your billings up to a max of 15UTA instead of itemizing. So as to whether that would be more beneficial to you or not would depend on the total annual billings.

admin wrote:An accountant in chile will help reduce your tax bill. A competant lawyer will keep you out of court and jail. Don't play games with the irs in chile. They know all and see all in chile.

I second you on both suggestions, and if you get on the wrong side of the IRS here, they wont let go until they´ve got you for one reason or another.