The implementation of Cabys codes was started by the Costa Rican Tax Administration in december 1st, 2020. Cabys means ¨catalog of goods and services¨, it is a general coded list of goods and services commercialized in the national Costa Rican market, just as the Share Holders Registry, the catalog has been created by the Central Bank of Costa Rica, the catalog is continuously updated and it´s posted live at the website of CBCR here and can also be downloaded as an excel spreadsheet, you can also find the updated list of Cabys codes in your electronic billing system.

Since the Cabys catalog contains all the products and services marketed in the country it is constantly being updated and new codes are added every time. Very important to mention that Cabys contains the names and codes of all the products and services, not the economical activities so at the time of seeking the codes please have into account the proper text to type is the good or service name and not the activity.

The goods and services listed in the Cabys catalog are identified by a unique 13 digit code, that allows its individualization, starting on 10 major categories and then amplify to over 20,000 products.

The first 5 categories, with the exception of the dressing clothes, medicines and health, respond to the international classification called CPC or central product classification published by the UN, with the back up of international organization such as Eurostat and OCDE. CPC keeps a correspondence with the international classification of all economic activities (CIIU).

How can i comply with this?

In order to comply with this you will need to adapt your billing system, as almost every commerce in the country has gradually moved to the electronic billing this is a simple step, the difficulty of doing this rely on the number of products and services your business provides to your clients, a for a hardware store for example, implementing the Cabys code is a massive task and requires lots of resources from programming experts to accountants and workers. For a professional or a person or corporation that has a limited amount of goods and services on their catalog this can become an easy task to comply.

The target of implementing the Cabys is going into your electronic billing system and manually check your registered products, then in each area of each product you will see a new field on the form called ¨Cabys¨, if you manage to see this field it will take you to a search screen where you can type the description of your good or service and find the closest match possible, once this is achieved and the right code for the product is assigned, the next step is saving your product settings and then close the section. This has to be repeated for every product of the company in order to comply with this requirement.

If you have doubts on how to assign or comply with Cabys please contact your acconting service provider.

In ConsultantsCR we are accounting, tax planning and financial advisors, you can contact us through whatsapp or write us an email to the address info@consultantscr.com, we will be glad to assist.