Bill 301, presented on July 9, 2025 by legislators Neftalí Omar Zamora Ibarra (circuit 8-5), Miguel Ángel Campos Lima, Alexandra María Brenes Samaniego, Yamireliz Daymirelkis Chong Smith and Jorge Isaac Bloise Iglesias, was sponsored by the Commerce and Economic Affairs Committee on August 19, 2025. On September 23 it was sent to a subcommittee made up of legislators Néstor Guardia, Julio De la Guardia and Dana Castañeda. On January 6, 2026 the subcommittee returned the text and the full committee approved it in First Reading the same day; since January 7 it has been pending Second Reading.

The explanatory memorandum documents that Article 21 of Law 80 of November 8, 2012 prohibits any rental of less than forty-five days in the District of Panama by those without a public tourist lodging permit, punishing violations with fines of five thousand to fifty thousand balboas. Article 7 of the bill expressly repeals that ban. In addition, the text notes that Article 77 of Executive Decree 82 of December 23, 2008 does not list short-stay lodging as a tourist activity and that Decree Law 4 of February 27, 2008 does not contemplate it either, creating a zone of legal uncertainty that has fueled a growing extralegal market.

To measure that market, the explanatory memorandum cites data from PriceLabs Inc. published in 2025: Airbnb has 13,159 listed properties nationwide in Panama, with an occupancy rate of 58 percent, regular rentals of three to four days and average monthly income of 13,849 dollars per property. The 2022 Oxford Economics report on Airbnb's economic impact in Latin America and the Caribbean puts direct guest spending in the region at 16,400 million dollars, equivalent to 4.9 percent of all direct tourism activity, and jobs generated at 416,000, with 4,500 million dollars in wages and salaries.

Article 2 of the bill adds numeral 7 to Article 3 of Decree Law 4 of 2008 to legally define short-stay tourist lodging as lodging service in residential properties, provided habitually or temporarily in exchange for economic compensation and marketed directly or through intermediary platforms. Article 4 amends Article 20 of Law 284 of February 14, 2022 to empower owners' assemblies under the horizontal property regime to approve or restrict, by decision of 51 percent or more of the real estate units, the operation of short-stay lodging in their co-ownership property.

On tax matters, Article 5 of the bill, numbered as Article 6 in the Committee version, confirms that providers are subject to the ten percent ITBMS established in Article 1057-V of the Tax Code on lodging services, as well as to Income Tax under Article 694 of the same Code and Executive Decree 170 of October 27, 1993. The Tourism Authority must share the National Tourism Registry with the General Directorate of Revenue to facilitate oversight. The General Directorate of Revenue is authorized to enter into agreements with digital platforms without tax residence in Panama in order to collect their taxes, following the tax sovereignty framework documented in Report A/78/235 of July 26, 2023 of the United Nations General Assembly cited in the explanatory memorandum.