Colombia Has One of the World’s Highest Corporate Tax Rates, OECD Says
Colombia has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, according to the OECD’s Corporate Tax Statistics 2026 report. Companies operating in the country pay a statutory corporate income tax rate of 35%, placing Colombia alongside France, Malta, and Morocco among the few jurisdictions with rates that high.
For every US$100 in taxable corporate profit, businesses owe US$35 in income tax, a level that stands well above both the global average of 21.2% and the Latin America and Caribbean average of 21.1%. The figures position Colombia as a clear outlier at a time when most countries have spent decades lowering corporate tax rates to improve their competitiveness and attract investment.
Why Colombia’s corporate tax rate reached 35%
This heavy tax burden traces back directly to the aftermath of the pandemic, when Colombia raised its corporate rate from 30% to 35% in 2021 as public finances deteriorated and the Government urgently needed more revenue. Andres Langebaek, former vice president of Anif (National Association of Financial Institutions), described that increase as a kind of last resort, explaining that it came only after the Government’s original tax reform proposal collapsed, leaving officials searching for a faster way to shore up collections.
Certain industries face an even steeper bill than the general rate suggests, since Langebaek noted that sectors like mining and finance carry an additional five percentage points on top of the standard tax, pushing their effective burden all the way up to 40% and placing Colombia among the very highest corporate tax environments anywhere in the world.
How high corporate taxes affect investment
The real concern behind these numbers goes beyond simple comparison, since a business deciding where to build a factory or expand an operation naturally weighs the tax bill it would face in Colombia against what it would pay somewhere else, and a costlier calculation here can easily send that investment to a different country instead.
Langebaek pointed to Peru as a concrete example of this dynamic already playing out, noting that entrepreneurs who have relocated there benefit directly from lower tax rates compared to what they left behind in Colombia. That same gap also undercuts domestic manufacturers competing against imported goods, since Langebaek explained that Colombian production loses its competitive edge whenever bringing a product in from abroad ends up cheaper simply because that product was taxed at a lower rate somewhere else.
Why Colombia differs from the global corporate tax trend
Worth noting, the comparison between countries requires some caution, since a nominal rate rarely tells the whole story once deductions, tax benefits, special regimes, and sector-specific rates start shaping what companies actually pay in practice.
Even accounting for those exceptions, the statutory rate still works as a meaningful signal of how attractive a country looks to prospective investors, and by that measure Colombia now finds itself at odds with a broader global pattern, since most nations spent the last two decades cutting corporate taxes to attract investment, pushing the average rate down from 28% in 2000 to 21,5% by 2019.
That decline has essentially stalled since then, holding steady at 21,2% through 2026, while Colombia moved in the opposite direction entirely, raising its own rate at the exact moment much of the world stopped lowering theirs, and leaving the country grouped today with just 25 other jurisdictions worldwide that still tax corporate profits at 30% or higher.