Fifty Years Later, Another Law Tries to Answer the Question

Part 1 of this series opened with a question hanging in the air since 1973: if Ley 93 excluded short-term and seasonal rentals from housing law, who was actually supposed to regulate them? Parts 2 through 5 traced fifty years of law circling that question without quite naming it, then colliding with a fast-growing, platform-driven rental market it was never built to handle.

Proyecto de Ley 301 — still "en trámite" before the Asamblea Nacional as this series is published — is the first real attempt at a purpose-built answer. It deserves credit for that: it gives the activity a legal name, a free digital registration path, and a repeal of the geographically narrow, punitive 45-day rule that caused so much of Part 5's confusion. But reading the bill's actual Texto Único line by line tells a more complicated story than "problem solved." What it fixes, and what it leaves untouched, matter just as much as the fact that it exists.

What the Bill Actually Gets Right

The Texto Único finally defines "arrendamiento turístico de inmuebles" in plain statutory language — any occupancy of one to ninety days, for payment, for tourism purposes, whether booked directly, through the owner's own site, or through a platform. It creates a free, fully digital self-registration through the Registro Nacional de Turismo, issuing a registry number immediately on submission. It requires that number on any listing, on any platform or medium, national or international, or the property "no podrá publicar ni alquilar" — legally, cannot be advertised or rented at all. It sets a uniform tarifa of 10% under Código Fiscal Article 1057-V, the same statute that governs Panama's ITBMS on lodging services generally, and empowers the DGI to sign agreements making digital platforms withholding agents for that tarifa. It repeals Article 21 of Ley 80 de 2012 outright, and it requires every building's Reglamento de Copropiedad to address whether short-term rental is permitted — leaving that decision with the co-owners rather than the national government.

That's real progress on paper. The question this piece asks is whether it's enough — and on three specific points, a close read of the text says no.

The Tarifa Doesn't Touch the Real Cost Gap

The bill sets the tarifa at 10%, and the committee report shows exactly why: APATEL, representing Panama's hotel industry, pushed hard for 15%, arguing hotels carry investment and compliance costs an informal host doesn't. The bill's sponsor, Deputy Neftalí Zamora, rejected that on the record — a 15% rate, he argued, would push hosts back toward informality rather than out of it.

That argument has a hole in it. The 10% tarifa is a pass-through consumption charge, paid by the guest and remitted to the treasury — it isn't what actually separates a compliant business from a clandestine one. What separates them is everything behind the tarifa: monthly and annual tax filings, the bookkeeping those filings require, and in practice a CPA to manage it, on top of the tarifa itself. APATEL has put a number on that overhead — roughly 5% — and Proyecto de Ley 301 does nothing to close that gap for anyone, hotel or small apartment owner, who has been paying it for years under the existing 2008 framework. If a host weighing formality against staying clandestine wouldn't register to avoid a 15% tarifa, it's hard to see why a 10% tarifa plus that same 5% of bookkeeping overhead changes the calculation. And if lawmakers believe 15% is unenforceable against clandestine operators, the logic that 10% is somehow enforceable against the very same operators is never actually explained — it's asserted. What the bill mostly guarantees is more tax revenue if compliance happens. Whether it changes anyone's decision to comply is a separate question it doesn't answer.

A Registration With No Inspection, Sitting Beside One That Required It

This is the sharpest asymmetry in the text. Article 3, numeral 5 of the Texto Único states plainly: registration requires only a digital form, RUC confirmation, the property address, room count, and a digital confirmation of compliance with technical minimums — and then, explicitly, "No se requerirá inspección física de la Autoridad de Turismo al inmueble." No physical inspection.

Compare that to what a host who registered under the existing Decreto Ejecutivo 82 de 2008 framework has actually gone through: municipal and fire department inspection before registration, annually reviewed fire extinguishers, smoke and gas alarms, and building requirements specific to public hospitality use. Those requirements exist because a property with rotating tourist occupants is not the same safety case as a private home — that's precisely the reasoning the industry itself has used to justify them. Proyecto de Ley 301 doesn't dispute that reasoning. It just declines to apply it to anyone registering under the new digital path. The bill doesn't ask whether safety and quality control matter for these properties — it simply assumes it can skip verifying them for whoever hasn't been verified yet, while continuing to require it, implicitly, of everyone who already has. That's not a neutral policy choice. It's a two-tier safety standard for guests staying in what the bill itself defines as the same activity.

A Tax Instrument, Not a Fairness Instrument

The platform-withholding idea — DGI agreements making Airbnb, Booking, and similar platforms collect and remit the tarifa directly — is genuinely useful where it works. But it only works where Panama can actually reach the platform. Every major short-term rental platform operating in the country is foreign-domiciled; the bill's own Article 6 has to build three separate fallback mechanisms depending on what each platform's home jurisdiction will legally allow it to share, which is itself a tell that voluntary cooperation isn't guaranteed. Article 9 sets the law's effective date at three months after promulgation, with no requirement that any of those cooperation agreements actually be signed first. And Article 3's blanket rule — no registry number, no listing, on any platform or medium — still depends entirely on someone enforcing it, which brings us back to the missing piece: there is no sanctions article in this bill. Not for a host who advertises without registering, not for a platform that lists an unregistered property, not for a private listing promoted on social media or a personal website, which the bill's language technically reaches but has no mechanism to police. Ley 80's old Article 21 was narrow — Panama City only — but it had a real penalty attached to it. Proyecto de Ley 301 is nationwide and broader in scope, and has nothing.

The Verdict

None of this means the bill is worthless. Naming the activity in law, opening a free registration path, and repealing a punitive, geographically arbitrary rule are real, overdue steps — and giving hosts a formal registry number that banks can recognize is a genuine practical improvement Part 5's account of the confusion years never had. But the bill that emerges from a close reading of its own text is narrower than its framing suggests: it is, above all, a tax-collection mechanism. It does not equalize the compliance-cost burden between hosts who've spent years playing by the existing rules and hosts who haven't. It does not extend the safety and inspection standard the industry itself insists matters to the properties that have never been checked. And it does not give anyone — the ATP, the DGI, or a competing legal host — an actual tool to enforce its own registration requirement once it's written into law.

Find the underlying documents here.

Fifty years after Ley 93 opened this gap, Proyecto de Ley 301 is the first law that finally uses the right words. Whether it closes the gap it names is a different question, and on the evidence of its own text, the honest answer is: not yet. Until it does — and until enforcement, not just definition, catches up — the safest way to book with confidence remains the same as it's been throughout this series: look for hosts already operating under the existing, inspected framework. That's the entire premise behind our directory.