Corporate tax, FATF status, sanctions exposure, data-protection law and arbitration enforceability for Panama — the facts a founder or counsel checks before incorporating or signing cross-border. Jurisdiction table checked 2026-08-14.
Panama runs a territorial tax system, the largest open ship registry in the world and the Colón Free Zone, which together explain most of its corporate population. It also carries reputational weight from past FATF listings and the 2016 leak, so expect bank onboarding to take longer and ask more.
This describes how the jurisdiction is commonly used in practice — not a recommendation for your situation. What fits depends on where your people, customers and assets actually are.
No changes recorded for this jurisdiction since tracking began. Every review pass so far has confirmed the figures above.
The headline corporate income tax rate in Panama is 25%. Free zones, small-business reliefs and participation exemptions can change the effective rate — treat this as the starting point.
What is this? Corporate tax rate →Panama is FATF-compliant and not on the grey list, which generally means smoother bank onboarding.
What is this? FATF status →Panama is not subject to broad sectoral sanctions programs in our dataset.
What is this? Sanctions exposure →Panama is in Annex I of the EU list. Member states apply defensive measures to Annex I jurisdictions; these differ by member state and commonly involve denial of deductions, withholding, or additional reporting. The list is revised twice a year.
The applicable data-protection statute is Ley 81/2019 (in force since 2019). If you process EU/UK personal data you also need a valid transfer mechanism into Panama.
What is this? Data-protection law →Panama is a party to the 1958 New York Convention, so a foreign arbitral award can generally be enforced by local courts — the single most important box to tick before agreeing to arbitration with a counterparty here.
What is this? New York Convention →Panama is a party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention. Public documents — corporate certificates, powers of attorney, notarised papers — need only a single apostille to be recognised in other member states, with no consular legalisation. This materially speeds up cross-border paperwork.
What is this? Apostille Convention (1961) →Foreigners may generally own 100% of a local company in Panama.
What is this? Foreign ownership →Panama does not mandate a resident local director.
What is this? Local director requirement →The entity types actually used in cross-border practice, with the name each one carries in its own register.
Names are given as the register uses them and are deliberately not translated — a form is called what it is called. The list covers what is commonly used, not everything the statute allows, and availability to a foreign founder can depend on activity, licensing and residency.
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Lawyers, accountants, corporate and trust providers, real-estate agents, dealers in precious metals and casinos carry anti-money-laundering duties of their own. FATF rates how well a country's law meets three of its recommendations on them.
This rates the quality of the legislation, not whether you personally must run these checks, and not how the law is enforced in practice — FATF measures enforcement on a separate scale that is not in this dataset.
Reports from 2025 onwards use the 2022 methodology; everything earlier uses the 2013 one. Ratings from the two are not directly comparable, which is why the methodology is always shown.
forma. generates NDAs, service, supply and corporate documents wired to this jurisdiction — from lawyer-built templates, processed privately on your device.
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