While being abroad in Costa Rica I how different business is done than in the United States. Most notably in government involvement and how it incentivizes companies to stay small. Having more left-leaning economic policies in their government causes many hurdles to be placed between Tico?s and their money. This means that there is a lot of red tapes to cut before a new business can be started taking roughly 2 years to finalize. Even after a business is started aggressive taxing regulations force citizens to pay almost 70% of their salaries directly to their government. However, this seems to have the effect of greatly incentivizing all tax cuts that one can afford. Many of these tax cuts come in the form of environmentally beneficial movements such as giving tax breaks to farmers who protect natural rainforests on their land, thus adding to the green reputation of Costa Rica. The most prominent form of these tax breaks in Costa Rica comes in the form of PYMEs. These are small businesses with less than 15 workers that make less than $200,000. This forces people to businesses to choose between being a small or large business as there is little to no benefit to being a medium-sized business.
My initial impressions of Costa Rica were also way off the reality of what I discovered over my two weeks there. When we first arrived late at night at mamatica?s house, a small front of the house guarded by a large metal fence with barbwire garnishing the top, It was very easy to be caught off guard and worry about the safety of the environment. However, despite all of this the quality of life and crime is very similar to what we find in America. In my time there I discovered that having more didn?t necessarily equate to being more fulfilled. People were very friendly very similar to how people are in the southern united states, and many of those that fall below the poverty line find their own ways of making an income selling things along he road or on the beaches. While this can catch us off guard since this is not a usual occurrence in America and there is often a negative stigma of giving money to the poor in America, this seemed to be as normal of an occurrence as buying things from a shop as I saw people regularly mingling with what in America we often ignore.
