Buying Property in Uruguay: Personal Name or Company?
The answer changed. What used to be solved with an offshore company now costs double in annual tax — and the right structure depends on three questions.
It is the first question that comes up when someone decides to buy in Punta del Este or Montevideo: in my own name or setting up a company?
The answer that circulates tends to be automatic —“always through a company, it protects more”— and it is wrong often enough to cost money.
There is no good structure in the abstract. There is a structure suited to a goal. And the goal is almost never a single one: protecting, transferring, renting and eventually selling are different purposes, and the form that serves one well may serve another badly.
The three questions that define the answer
Before any corporate decision, we answer in this order:
Will this property generate income? A family-use apartment and a short-term rental property have different tax treatments and, therefore, different optimal structures.
Who will inherit, and in which country does that person live? The succession of an asset located in Uruguay follows Uruguayan law. The form of ownership determines whether what is transferred is the property or a corporate stake —and the consequences, in cost and time, are not the same.
Are you, or do you intend to be, a Uruguayan tax resident? The same structure produces different results depending on your tax residence —and on that of your country of origin, which may still reach anyone who has not formalized their exit.
Individual ownership: simpler than its reputation suggests
A foreigner buys urban property in Uruguay on the same terms as a Uruguayan. There is no prior authorization, no nationality restriction, and no need to have residency to be an owner.
Net Wealth Tax. Here is the difference that weighs most and that almost no one calculates in advance. The resident individual has a tax-free threshold —around $6.6 million in 2026, doubled for the family unit— and a reduced rate on the excess. The non-resident individual faces a markedly higher progressive scale on assets located in the country.
That is: the same person, with the same apartment, pays different amounts depending on their tax residence. This turns the order of decisions —buying before or after configuring residency— into an economic variable, not a bureaucratic one.
Rental. The resident taxes rental income under IRPF, with a general rate without deductions or a slightly higher alternative allowing limited deductions. The non-resident taxes under IRNR on net income.
Sale. The capital gain is taxed. And there is a little-known trap: an individual who sells more than two properties in the same calendar year begins to be treated as a business activity, paying IRAE from the third sale on. Anyone buying three off-plan units to resell needs to know this beforehand, not after.
Uruguayan company: when the structure pays for itself
The local company —today, typically an SAS— works well in three situations: a genuine real-estate operation, with several units; the entry of partners; and estate planning that prefers to transfer shares rather than properties.
The cost is known: 25% IRAE on net income and an annual Net Wealth Tax on the property’s value, without the tax-free thresholds the resident individual enjoys. Add accounting, filings and the ultimate-beneficiary registry.
For a single family-use property, that math rarely works out. For a portfolio generating income, it often does.
Foreign company: where the math flipped
This is the point where much of the available content has aged badly.
A foreign company without a permanent establishment in Uruguay is a Net Wealth Tax payer on the property, via withholding. So far, predictable.
The problem appears when the company is incorporated in a low- or no-tax jurisdiction —the so-called BONT entities, per a list published by the Uruguayan tax administration. In that case:
- the Net Wealth Tax doubles;
- rental income stops being taxed at the ordinary non-resident rate and moves to a general rate with a surcharge, approaching around 30%;
- on sale, the option to determine the gain by a notional criterion is lost, which usually raises the tax base.
It is not a new rule —it comes from the international fiscal-transparency legislation in force since 2017. But it is still sold as a solution to families who inherited it from an old plan and never reviewed it.
Responsibility note: rates, tax-free thresholds and the BONT jurisdiction list are reviewed periodically and must be confirmed with the Directorate General of Taxation at the time of the transaction. This article describes the decision logic; it does not replace the calculation for your concrete case.
The country-of-origin side, which no one puts on the ledger
A Uruguayan corporate structure held by a tax resident of another country is not neutral there.
Many jurisdictions reach the profits of foreign-controlled entities annually, and tax dividends their residents receive from foreign companies. Generally, double-taxation treaties allocate powers and grant a credit for tax paid in Uruguay —but they do not, on their own, remove the country of residence’s power to tax.
The translation into a decision: setting up a Uruguayan company to “drop off the radar” of your country of origin does not work. What works is deciding the structure considering both systems at once —and, when the goal is to change tax residency, in the correct order.
How we decide, in practice
Family-use property, single, no income: individual ownership, in most cases. The company adds annual cost and complexity without delivering proportional protection.
Property or set of properties generating income: the corporate analysis is justified, and the comparison must include the Net Wealth Tax, not only the income tax.
Declared estate goal: the structure changes shape. The question stops being tax and becomes wealth continuity across generations —and the answer usually combines ownership with an estate instrument, not one or the other.
Structure inherited from an old plan: review before any new move. Companies in low-tax jurisdictions holding Uruguayan property are, in most cases, paying more tax than the direct alternative.
If a holding is the underlying question, see our Wealth Protection and Holding service.
The starting point
Buying property in Uruguay is simple. Buying it in the wrong structure is expensive —and the cost does not appear on the deed. It appears in the first Net Wealth Tax, in the first rental filing, or in the succession, fifteen years later, when there is nothing left to fix.
Before signing the reservation, it is worth knowing whose name that property should be in. It is worth reviewing the process and costs of the purchase and, if farmland is involved, the rules specific to rural land.
Informational content. It does not constitute legal, tax, accounting or investment advice. The rules cited were verified against official sources in July 2026 and may be amended. Each structure is analyzed case by case.