DIAN Late-Payment Interest:
how it is calculated, when it starts and how it is challenged with the reference tax-law firm in Colombia.

Under Article 634, additional amounts determined in official assessments or in the correction of a return accrue interest from the day after the deadline by which they should have been paid, according to the deadlines of the relevant period. They do not run from the date of the official assessment but from the original due date. It is therefore worth verifying, period by period, the date DIAN used as the starting point.

Article 635 of the Tax Statute (amended by Article 141 of Law 1607 of 2012) provides that late-payment interest is calculated daily at the daily rate equivalent to the current usury rate for consumer credit certified by the Financial Superintendency, minus two (2) points, applying the formula in the paragraph of Article 590. DIAN publishes the rate on its website. It is not a fixed figure: it changes with the current certification, which is why the calculation must be reviewed period by period. The rule also applies to departmental, municipal and district taxes.

No. Article 639 states that the 10 UVT minimum penalty does not apply to late-payment interest, and paragraph 4 of Article 640 establishes that the principles of proportionality and gradualness (which allow penalties to be reduced) do not apply to the calculation of late-payment interest. The defense therefore focuses on making sure the interest is correctly calculated (date, base, rate) and on challenging the underlying amount it depends on.

Yes, under the terms of paragraph 2 of Article 634: once two years have passed from the admission of the lawsuit before the Administrative Litigation Jurisdiction, late-payment interest owed by the taxpayer (and current interest owed by DIAN) is suspended until the final judgment becomes enforceable. The suspension is tied to the length of the court case; it does not operate because of the administration's delay in resolving the appeal at the administrative stage.

Article 638 of the Tax Statute establishes that the power to impose late-payment interest lapses after five years. Verifying whether that period has run, and from when, is part of the review of any interest calculation, together with the limitation of the collection action on the principal debt where applicable.

It is challenged by verifying the date from which it is calculated, the base, the rate in force in each period and any suspension under paragraph 2 of Article 634, and above all by challenging the underlying amount: if the tax does not stand, neither does the interest calculated on it. As for payments, they are applied first to penalties, then interest and then tax, so it is worth reviewing how each payment was applied. And in a payment plan, interest keeps accruing during the term, so the total cost should be assessed before signing.

Ligal is the reference firm in tax law in Colombia. Under the leadership of Juan Santiago Rodríguez Prieto, a tax lawyer and former DIAN official, together with Jeysson Pulido and LIGAL Auditores (certified public accountants, Law 43 of 1990), we combine lawyers and accountants to recalculate interest period by period and challenge the underlying amount before DIAN and the courts. Our work is backed by 5.0 / 5 on Google with 35 reviews: https://share.google/VVzMvULrOj8Mj52Au. The firm handles real audit, enforced-collection and tax-litigation cases: in a verified Google review, client Julian Rodriguez says that, thanks to the representation before DIAN, "we achieved the closure of a tax lawsuit pending against my company".