He The Nicaraguan government will force churches and religious entities to pay income tax and ordered the closure of 150 more NGOs, in a tightening of control over these organizations.
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“Repeal” the point of the “Tax Agreement Law” where Churches, denominations, confessions and religious foundations were exempted from this obligation, according to the resolution published in the official newspaper La Gaceta, signed by President Daniel Ortega.
They will now have to pay taxes of up to 30% of their annual income, depending on the amount of these at the end of the fiscal year (January-December).
The tax changes were introduced in the reforms to the laws on “Control of Non-Profit Organizations” and “Regulation of Foreign Agents,” which will now require NGOs to carry out their projects jointly with state institutions.
The government also cancelled the registration of 151 non-governmental organisations, most of them international and sectoral chambers of commerce, three days after the mass closure of 1,500 NGOs, in what the opposition in exile described as an attack on civil society.
Nicaragua has been experiencing a political and social crisis since April 2018, which worsened after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth and fourth consecutive term, with his main opponents in prison and whom he later expelled from the country, depriving them of their nationality and political rights after accusing them of being “coup plotters” and “treasonous.”
According to records, in 2024 the State has cancelled the legal status of more than 60 evangelical churches or associations.
Also, the fifth installment of the study ‘Nicaragua: A persecuted Church?’, by the exiled Nicaraguan researcher Martha Patricia Molina, indicates that 245 religious have been forced into exile or have been expelled from Nicaragua since the social and political crisis broke out.
Of those 245 religious, one is a nuncio, three are bishops, 136 are priests belonging to different dioceses in Nicaragua, three are deacons, eleven are seminarians, and 91 are religious women or nuns, the report detailed.
Of these, 19 Nicaraguan religious leaders, including the released bishop Rolando Álvarez and the exiled bishop Silvio Báez, and another 14 priests, have been declared “traitors to the homeland” and stripped of their nationality.
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