Colombia's Wealth Tax in 2026: What the New President Changed — and What Didn't

On Friday, August 7, Colombia swore in a new president — and if you did your Colombia wealth tax and visa research last month, some of it is already wrong. Abelardo de la Espriella took the oath in Cali, not Bogotá, signed four decrees before the end of day one, and used his inaugural address to promise the government will "stop punishing those who invest and generate wealth." If you live here or plan to, the question you actually care about is simple: what does this do to the wealth tax, your residency, and your money?

Here is the answer nobody in the expat Facebook groups will give you straight, because the truth is less dramatic than the rumor. The scariest version of the wealth tax was already killed — by a court, not a politician. The relief the new president is promising is not law yet. And while everyone argues about the tax, a hard deadline is bearing down on a whole tier of residents who don't know it exists. That gap — between what changed, what didn't, and what has a date on it — is exactly where people lose money.

What the New President Did on Day One

De la Espriella won the runoff by less than one percent — 49.66 to 48.70, about 252,000 votes in a country of 52 million. Hold that number, because it shapes everything that follows. A president who wins by a rounding error does not have a mandate to do whatever he wants. He has a mandate to try.

What he tried on day one was not symbolic. He signed an immediate freeze on government spending, joined the U.S.-led "Shield of the Americas" security program — reversing the previous government's posture in a single afternoon — and installed a former finance minister, José Manuel Restrepo, as vice president. Markets read Restrepo as the adult in the room and the whole package as market-friendly: austerity, a tax overhaul, and a hard line on security. For anyone deploying Western capital here, that direction is genuinely good news. But "direction" and "law" are two different things, and the space between them is your money.

The Wealth Tax: A Court Already Killed the Threat

Here is the part people were told to fear, and why that fear is out of date. Colombia taxes its tax residents on their worldwide net worth — not just your Medellín apartment, but the house back home, the brokerage account, the business you still own somewhere else. So when the outgoing government declared an economic emergency in late 2025 and issued a decree cutting the wealth-tax threshold from 72,000 UVT to 40,000 — in dollars, from roughly $1.1 million down to about $500,000 — it did not just catch more Colombians. It swept in a whole tier of foreigners who never thought of themselves as wealthy.

Then something happened that had never happened before in Colombian history. In January 2026, the Constitutional Court suspended the state-of-economic-emergency decree itself, ruling that the executive cannot bypass Congress to impose taxes even under emergency powers. When the emergency fell, the decrees hanging off it fell too — including that threshold cut. So write this down, because six-month-old guides still repeat it wrong: the $500,000 wealth-tax threshold is not the law. It was struck down. The operative floor is back to 72,000 UVT — call it $1.1 to $1.2 million — with marginal rates starting at half a percent.

Now the new president says he wants to delete the wealth tax entirely. Maybe he does. But an abolition promised in an inaugural speech is not a bill, Congress is divided, and the last government's attempt to make this cut permanent went to that same Congress and died. The honest read: the threat over your head was removed by a court; the relief being promised to you has not been written. Plan on the law as it stands and treat abolition as upside — not as a reason to restructure your affairs this month on the strength of a press conference.

What Did NOT Change (Where People Still Get Bled)

Nothing that stayed the same trends on YouTube, which is exactly why it costs people money. Three things held firm, and any one of them can still catch you.

The 183-day rule is untouched. Spend 183 days or more in Colombia inside any rolling 365-day window and you are a tax resident — worldwide income and assets on the table. Note the word rolling: it is not the calendar year, so you can be careful in January and still cross the line in October without noticing.

Capital still has to come through the front door. Money you bring in for a property or a company must be registered as foreign direct investment, or it does not count toward your visa and it does not leave the country cleanly later. No election changes that.

And your visa lane is still what it is — thresholds pinned to the minimum wage, moving every January. A new administration does not retroactively refile your paperwork. If you were waiting for the new guy to make any of this easier, he did not, and there is no signal he will soon.

The Deadline With Your Name On It

This is the one with an actual date, and almost nobody I meet here knows it exists. If you hold a Colombian resident (R) visa issued before October 2022 in the old sticker format, you are required to exchange it for the new electronic visa. Under Resolution 9316 of 2024, the deadline is October 31, 2026 — weeks away.

Here is the trap: many of those old visas have the word "indefinite" printed on them. People see it and reasonably assume the thing cannot expire. The residency may be indefinite; the format is not. Miss the window and you inherit a status problem that shows up at your bank, with your health coverage, at your phone carrier, and at the airport — with sanctions or lost residency on the table. If your visa was issued from October 2022 onward, this does not apply to you. If it is older, or you are not sure, pull it out this week and check the issue date. It is one of the rare problems in this country with a hard deadline and a simple fix.

The Play

So what do you actually do? Count your days precisely, not roughly — if you are near 183 in any rolling window, you are making a decision whether you realize it or not. Check your visa's issue date before October 31. If you are anywhere near tax residency, get a real contador before day 90, because structure is something you do in advance; after the fact it is just filing. Move any capital in through the front door as registered FDI, every time. And above all, make your decisions against the law as written, not the law as promised. If the president abolishes the wealth tax, you will have been conservative and pleasantly surprised. If he does not, you will still be compliant. There is no version of that trade where being careful costs you. I walk the whole map — the visa lanes, moving money the way that keeps it, the structure that sits between your foreign assets and a Colombian courtroom — in the video above.