Guatemala sets 30- and 60-business-day deadlines for SAT to resolve IVA refunds (Decreto 17-2025)

What changed in detail

Guatemala’s Congress issued Decreto 17-2025, the Ley para la Facilitación del Cumplimiento en la Devolución de Impuestos, on 18 November 2025 as a national-urgency law. It was published in the Diario de Centro América on 28 November 2025 and took effect the next day, 29 November 2025.

It rewrites articles 23, 23 “A” and 25 of the IVA Law and articles 99 and 153 of the Tax Code:

• General procedure (IVA art. 23 “A”). Refund claims are accumulated quarterly or semi-annually. Once the documents are complete, SAT checks whether the credit balance is due. It must resolve within 30 business days for a quarterly period and 60 business days for a semi-annual one, then authorise the Banco de Guatemala to pay. If SAT does not decide in time, the claim is treated as refused so the taxpayer can appeal.
• Refund account (new IVA art. 23 “B”). The Banco de Guatemala may open a specific account for tax refunds, funded with at least 8% of daily IVA deposits.
• Special regime (IVA art. 25). Exporters and suppliers to exempt persons may claim monthly refunds of 75% of the declared credit for amounts up to Q500,000 and 60% above that.
• Credit against future taxes (Tax Code art. 99). At the taxpayer’s request, the balance can be credited against future taxes instead of being refunded.

What it means

The law is in force. For exporters it turns refund timing from an open-ended wait into a fixed deadline that can be enforced through the deemed-refusal rule. Track the date the file was complete, not the date it was filed, since that is when the clock starts.

The dedicated Banco de Guatemala account is meant to make payment depend less on general budget cash. Whether it does depends on how the account is funded in practice.