Working from Colombia as a United Kingdom resident

At a glance

Rule coverage

What the rules say about Colombia

The rules below are the ones most likely to shape a stay in Colombia, in plain words and with the source behind each one. Your own report tells you which of them apply to you.

1. Significant issueTax residency

   Past 183 days you become a Colombian tax resident, and the clock runs regardless of your visa

   More than 183 days of presence in any rolling 365-day window makes you a Colombian tax resident, taxed on worldwide income at progressive rates up to 39 percent. This is a trap worth naming directly: the 183-day tax clock is completely independent of your visa. A digital nomad on the V visa, a visa that explicitly never leads to permanent residency, still becomes a worldwide-income tax resident the moment presence crosses 183 days. The visa question and the tax question are decoupled, do not assume the nomad visa's 2-year validity means 2 tax-free years. If the 183-day period straddles two calendar years, you are deemed resident from the second year, the one in which day 183 falls.

2. Significant issueImmigration and visa

   Past 180 days on tourist status you are out of runway

   Tourist entry plus the one PTP extension tops out at 180 days in the calendar year. Beyond that you need a different status entirely, most likely the digital nomad V visa if you are working remotely, or you are overstaying. Overstay fines are charged per day and paid on exit, reported up to around COP 1,400,000, with possible entry bans of up to 5 years for serious violations.

3. Significant issueMoving your company

   Keep running your foreign company from Colombia past residency and you risk dragging its tax residency here too

   A relocator who becomes a Colombian tax resident and keeps managing a foreign company from Colombia can trigger two things at once: a permanent establishment of the foreign company under Colombian PE rules, and a shift of the foreign company's place of effective management, sede efectiva de administracion, to Colombia, which makes the foreign company itself a Colombian tax resident on its worldwide income. This is the single biggest tax exposure for a leave-my-company-behind-but-keep-running-it mover.

4. Significant issueRight to work

   Working for Colombian clients or employers always needs a work-authorizing visa

   Local-market work, meaning employment or services for Colombian companies or clients, always requires a work-authorizing visa, an M category or a specific work-eligible V category. Neither the tourist stamp nor the digital nomad V visa, which is explicitly restricted to foreign employers and foreign clients, covers this.

5. Significant issuePersonal income tax

   Without an in-force treaty, a long stay risks unrelieved double taxation

   Your tax-residence country has no in-force double taxation treaty with Colombia right now. That includes the Netherlands, whose treaty was signed in February 2022 but still is not ratified, so the Article 15 183-day protection other nationalities get simply is not available yet. Past 183 days, Colombia taxes your worldwide income under domestic law, and without a treaty there is no tie-breaker and no guaranteed relief, only whatever unilateral credit your home country offers on its own.

6. Needs checkingCrypto tax and legal status

   Regular or professional crypto trading is taxed as ordinary income, up to 39 percent, no matter how long you held

   Crypto held 2 years or less, or sold as part of a regular or professional activity, trading, forex-style, CFDs, is taxed as ordinary income at progressive rates up to 39 percent as a resident, or a flat 35 percent if you are a non-resident. Regular, frequent trading counts as professional even if some individual lots were held over 2 years, the 15 percent occasional-gains rate does not rescue those lots once your overall pattern reads as habitual trading rather than sporadic investing.

What tends to surprise people here

• The 183-day tax residency clock runs independent of your visa type
• The Netherlands tax treaty is signed but still not ratified
• Colombian-source income as a non-resident is taxed flat at 35 percent with no deductions

Tax treaty between United Kingdom and Colombia