El Salvador's free-zone and international services incentives
- Guatemala against the region
- Guatemala against the region
- Audited
El Salvador combines the Free Zones Act (D.461) and the International Services Act (D.431): industrial maquila plus a broad catalog of services (BPO, logistics, repair). Free-zone users have income-tax exemption for 15 years (developers: 10 years in the metropolitan area / 15 outside it — adviser summaries, to be checked against the text). The reform of January-February 2026 adds a further extension of 10 years (previously 5) for developers, users and DPAs that can show additional investment of more than 100%, with exemption from income tax, municipal tax and property-transfer tax during the extension, and moves the minimum investment and employment deadlines to the first 6-12 months of operation (verified in Consortium Legal).
The research is written in English; quoted figures, source names and the titles of legal instruments stay in the language their source published them in.
Figures
- Income-tax exemption, Salvadoran free-zone users
- 15 years
- Additional extension (2026 reform)
- 10 years with +100% investment
Caveat
Sources
Organizations named in the answer
Related records
- Population, GDP and labor force: Guatemala versus the region (2024)
- Labor force at 7.5 vs 8.2 million: WDI versus ENEIC
- Guatemala's 2026 minimum wage for maquila and non-agricultural work
- Costa Rica's 2026 minimum wage versus Guatemala
- El Salvador's maquila minimum wage
- Honduras' 2026 maquila minimum wage
This layer is research: read from public sources by the archive's own team, every claim cited with the date it was consulted, and audited where it is marked so. It has not entered the verified store — no figure here was fetched back from its source or stamped with a retrieval time — so it wears no red provenance numeral and never mixes with the verified figures.