Working from Honduras as a United States resident

At a glance

What you would actually pay

The headline rates, and the qualifier that has to travel with them. Every figure comes from Honduras's own cross-checked rules, not from an estimate.

Income tax

Territorial. Foreign income of a resident is genuinely untaxed. Honduran income runs exempt up to 25%.

Corporate tax

25%, plus a 5% solidarity surcharge that takes the top to 30%.

Getting profit out

Flat 10%, outside the progressive scale.

Honest all-in

Zero Honduran tax on foreign earnings, because a resident's foreign income is genuinely untaxed. That is ordinary territorial Honduras, no special zone required.

Rule coverage

What the rules say about Honduras

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

1. Significant issueImmigration and visa

   Past 120 days you are outside every tourist route in the whole CA-4 area

   120 days, the 90-day base plus the single 30-day extension, is the absolute ceiling for a tourist stay in Honduras and the wider CA-4 area. There is no third bite. Staying longer without a residency permit or a permiso especial de permanencia is not a lawful option, whatever your nationality. This ceiling is also the reason the tax residency trigger at roughly three months matters so much, it arrives before the immigration ceiling does, see the separate tax residency finding.

2. Significant issueMoving your company

   SAR stopped issuing tax numbers to ZEDE entities, and Honduran banks froze their accounts, on Prospera's own sworn account

   This finding comes from the claimants' own memorial in the ICSID arbitration, the account most favourable to Prospera, and it still describes serious operational breakage. The Tax Authority informed Prospera ZEDE vendors that the 2022 repeal eliminated legal recognition of ZEDE-registered entities, and stopped processing requests for tax identification numbers, RTNs, for entities incorporated in Prospera ZEDE, which the pleading itself states affects their access to local banking. Separately, in June 2022 Ficohsa Bank froze the accounts of a Prospera-linked subsidiary and began rejecting transfers from the US to ZEDE-incorporated entities, with bank executives privately telling claimants they were under pressure from the National Bank and Insurance Commission. Prospera's own account describes convincing fintech companies such as OneSafe, a Coinbase Ventures subsidiary, to provide banking as traditional banks grew reluctant. An entity without a Honduran RTN cannot function as an ordinary Honduran commercial actor, it cannot file, invoice, register property or bank normally, whatever the constitutional argument says at the counter.

3. Significant issueResidency routes

   Prospera's own arbitration center publishes a disclaimer telling residents they assume all risk of loss

   The Prospera Arbitration Center publishes a Legal Stability Disclosure and Disclaimer that reads, in plain terms, as a comprehensive risk warning written by the operator itself. It states that Decrees 32-2022 and 33-2022 heighten risks of legal instability, adverse judicial or arbitration determinations, political instability, violence, property damage, expropriation and treaty violations. It acknowledges that various Honduran public officials and agencies have articulated or acted on the position that the Decrees apply to Prospera ZEDE. And it states directly, quoted verbatim, that continued reliance upon the legal stability entails the knowing and voluntary assumption of all risks of loss, that there is no guarantee any countermeasures will succeed in preserving the rights and privileges, and that Prospera and its affiliates disclaim any and all responsibility or liability associated with the risks and the decrees.

4. Significant issuePersonal income tax

   A Dutch BV's statutory director stays inside Dutch wage tax unconditionally, and Honduras can tax the same work too

   Wet IB 2001 art 7.2 deems a statutory director or commissioner of a Netherlands-established body to have carried out that role in the Netherlands for Dutch tax purposes, regardless of where he physically works. Wet LB 1964 art 2(3) carves directors and commissioners of a Netherlands-established body out of the non-resident exclusion entirely, its opening word is tenzij, unless, before the work is performed in a function of bestuurder or commissaris of such a body. Art 2(4) and art 2(5), which otherwise let a non-resident's dienstbetrekking drop out of Dutch wage tax withholding under stated conditions, each apply only to dienstbetrekkingen other than those named in lid 3's first sentence, which is exactly the director and commissioner category. So neither conditional exclusion is available to a statutory director in the first place, Dutch wage tax withholding on a Dutch BV's statutory director continues unconditionally, whether or not Honduras also taxes the fee. Meanwhile, if the director's work is physically performed from Honduran soil, Honduras may treat the same fees as Honduran-source under its own source rules, see the separate finding on that unresolved question. There is no Netherlands-Honduras tax treaty to allocate the income between the two states. The result is genuine, unrelieved double taxation on director's fees, with both states reaching the same income, nothing offsetting it, and no route to stop the Dutch withholding by pointing to Honduran tax paid.

5. Significant issueLeaving home: exit tax and ties

   The conserverende aanslag no longer lapses after 10 years, and Honduras adds a security requirement on top

   On emigration, a Dutch substantial-interest holder is treated as having disposed of the shares, producing a box 2 conserverende aanslag. For deregistration after 15 September 2015, 15:15, the deferral runs indefinitely, and remission after 10 years was abolished with retroactive effect, surviving only for pension and lijfrente conserverende aanslagen. Honduras sits outside the EU and EEA, so automatic deferral under the Invorderingswet, which only applies within the EU or EEA, does not apply, deferral is granted only on request and only against sufficient security, a bank guarantee, a mortgage over immovable property, or a pledge of good-quality receivables. A Dutch founder with a EUR 2 million BV can face a box 2 conserverende aanslag of roughly EUR 600,000 at 2026 rates, and posting acceptable security to the Ontvanger is the real gate before any Honduran question, Prospera included, even enters the picture.

6. Significant issueSocial security

   No social security treaty at all links the Netherlands to Honduras, not even an export mechanism

   Verified directly against the SVB's own published list of Dutch treaty countries, last checked 1 May 2026, Honduras does not appear. This is a genuine gap, not just a coordination gap, there is no A1 or equivalent posting certificate, no aggregation of insurance periods, and unlike some other Latin American destinations, no separate export and enforcement treaty either that would at least keep a Dutch benefit already in payment flowing to Honduras without being cut off for living abroad. An EU or EHIC-based expectation carries no weight here, those instruments only work inside the EU coordination system.

What tends to surprise people here

• The Prospera ZEDE framework was annulled by the Supreme Court and no restoring law exists
• Tax residency starts after more than three months, far earlier than the usual 183 days
• No tax treaty and no social security treaty with the Netherlands, double premiums are the default

Tax treaty between United States and Honduras