Argentina · Investment Visa
Argentina's investment visa asks for about $980
That number was written into the rules in 2010 and never touched again. It isn't the reason this route stalls.
This is the route Argentina's immigration law calls inversionista. You put money into a real business here, hand Migraciones an investment project, and get a one-year permit that renews toward permanent residency. The rule is still on the books. Whether anyone's getting a decision at the other end is the part nobody advertises.
The numbers that decide this one
$980
Minimum investment the rule names
1.5 million pesos, and nothing indexes it
$65
Filing fee inside Argentina
Nearer $600 if you file at a consulate
3 years
Temporary permits before permanent residency
Renewed one year at a time
Zero
Investor files resolved since 2018
A law firm's records request to Migraciones
The regulation
What Argentina asks an investor for
What counts as an investment
The investor category lives in article 23 of Argentina's immigration law, and a 2010 regulation fills in the detail. It wants a productive, commercial or service investment "of interest to the country." Buying a home to live in doesn't count. Buying a going concern, opening a restaurant, fitting out a workshop or funding a project that employs people does. The size test is where the rule has aged worst.
How the money arrives, and who reads the plan
The file has to show the origin of the funds and their arrival in Argentina through a bank the Banco Central authorizes. Cash you carried in won't do it. Then, a ministry reads your project and scores it on three things: the nature of the investment, whether the project is legal, and whether it can pay for itself. That opinion is explicitly non-binding, and it's where the file stops moving. Migraciones grants the permit and sets a hard deadline for completing the investment.
What you have to hand over
A police certificate from every country you lived in for more than a year over the last three, which for an American means the FBI one, apostilled. A sworn translation by a traductor público, stamped by the Colegio de Traductores. Proof of an Argentine address, utility bill or certificate of domicile. You file through RaDEX, the online system, and you have to be standing in Argentina to do it.
Investment Visa
For individuals making a significant investment in Argentina. Details may vary based on the type and amount of investment.
- Processing time
- ~180 days
- Timeline
- 1 year (renewable)
- Difficulty
- Moderate
Key requirements
- Valid US passport
- Proof of qualifying investment in Argentina
- Business plan
- Police clearance certificate
- Proof of address in Argentina
About that data card
That card says the details vary with the type and amount of investment. The rule is more specific than that, and it names 1.5 million pesos. Two smaller notes. Difficulty is stored on a five-point scale and printed out of ten, so a 4 there doesn't mean four out of ten. Also, the processing figure is a target Migraciones publishes, not a measured outcome.
The part nobody advertises
Why the file goes in and does not come out
The rule named a ministry that was gone in weeks
Decreto 616/2010 was signed in May 2010 and handed the review to the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. That ministry was dissolved the following June, less than two months later. The job then passed through Industry, Production, Productive Development and a secretariat of the same name, and Productive Development itself was folded into the Economy Ministry at the end of 2023. The government's own instructions never caught up. One national page still names Industry and Tourism, another names Productive Development, and the City of Buenos Aires names Production. None of the three is a ministry today.
What a Buenos Aires firm found when it asked
Lux Brumalis, an immigration practice in the city, put a public records request to Migraciones. The answer it published: since 2018, the agency has not resolved one investor file, for or against. The projects go into the bureaucracy and are not returned to Migraciones for a decision. That's one firm's account of one answer rather than a published statistic.
What Migraciones does instead
The same firm says the workaround comes from inside Migraciones. Rather than sit on an investor file, its residency office offers people a different category. Where nothing else fits, it opens the case under the "razones especiales" clause of the same article 23, which gets decided far more easily. Migraciones also told the firm a replacement decree is being drafted. No date has been published.
Who this file is right for
If you're going to run a real Argentine business yourself, inversionista is still the truthful description of what you are doing, and a local lawyer can file it and re-file it under razones especiales when it stalls. If you mostly want residency and happen to have capital, the passive-income route gets decided while this one may not. The difference isn't the money. It's whether anyone at the far end signs.
If you build it anyway
The company is the easy part. The tax is not.
What Argentina takes
An Argentine company pays 25 percent on profits up to about $87,000, then 30 percent, then 35 at the top. Paying the profit out costs another 7 percent in withholding. At the bottom bracket, that's roughly 30 cents of every dollar of profit gone before it reaches you. On top sits 21 percent VAT on nearly everything you sell and a provincial tax on gross turnover.
When you become its taxpayer
You turn into an Argentine tax resident when you get permanent residency, or after twelve continuous months on a temporary permit. After that, income from anywhere lands in the Argentine net on a 5 to 35 percent scale, and the wealth tax, Bienes Personales, reaches assets anywhere too. One softener: a foreigner who's been working here under five years is assessed only on what they hold in Argentina.
What the IRS does with your new company
Own 10 percent or more of a foreign company and Form 5471 joins your 1040. Own more than half and it's a controlled foreign corporation, which lets the IRS tax you on its profits in the year they're earned, whether or not you take a peso out. The 2025 tax law renamed that regime and made it bite harder from 2026. A missed 5471 starts at $10,000 per company per year; it gets charged automatically. The two countries have never signed one of the treaties that stops the same profit being taxed twice, so nothing softens the overlap.
Who to line up before the money moves
Legalize That Doc
Document Preparation
Every foreign paper in this file needs an apostille, and the police certificate has to be current. Legalize That Doc pulls FBI records, gets them apostilled and arranges translation, which is the step that quietly adds a month when you start it late.
Moneycorp
Currency Exchange
The rule doesn't just want the investment. It wants proof the money reached Argentina through a bank the Banco Central authorizes. Moneycorp handles large international transfers, and it leaves the kind of paper trail this file turns on.
MyExpatTaxes
U.S. Expat Tax Service
An American who owns an Argentine company owns a controlled foreign corporation, with its own form and its own automatic penalty. Ask MyExpatTaxes what a first year of Form 5471 costs before you incorporate, not after.
What Americans ask about this route
What taxes will I pay if I start a business in Argentina?
The company pays 25 to 35 percent on profits depending on size, plus 7 percent withholding when it distributes them, plus 21 percent VAT and a provincial turnover tax. You personally become an Argentine tax resident after twelve continuous months, at which point your worldwide income and worldwide assets are both in scope.
Can I buy an apartment in Buenos Aires and get residency?
No. The regulation asks for a productive, commercial or service investment of interest to the country, and a home you live in isn't one of those. Property can qualify when it's the basis of an operating business, such as a hotel or a commercial rental. Foreigners can buy Argentine property freely either way, without any residency attached.
What should I apply for instead?
If you have capital but no Argentine business to run, the passive-income route is the one that gets decided. It's pegged to five times the monthly minimum wage. Retirees file the pension version instead. If you genuinely are opening a business, hire an Argentine immigration lawyer and ask about the special-reasons category as the fallback.
Does the investor route lead to permanent residency?
Yes, on paper. Temporary permits run a year at a time, and after three continuous years a non-Mercosur national can apply to change category to permanent. A 2025 decree added a means test at that point, and it cancels a temporary residency if you spend six months or more outside Argentina.
How much do you have to invest for an Argentina investment visa?
Argentina's immigration regulation names 1.5 million pesos, which is about $980 at the official rate in September 2026. That figure was written in 2010 and hasn't been indexed, so inflation has hollowed it out. Commercial sites quoting $15,000, $150,000 or a six-figure minimum are describing something the rule does not say.
How long does the Argentina investor visa take?
Spanish-language practitioners put four to eight months from landing to holding the residency card, with the immigration decision itself running two to six months. Those are estimates for the paper process. They assume a ministry sends an opinion back on your project, which is the step that's been stalling.
Is Argentina's investor residency actually being granted?
That's the honest problem with it. A Buenos Aires immigration firm asked Migraciones under the public records law and published the answer: no investor file has been resolved since 2018, favorably or otherwise. The category is still open and still listed. Getting a decision out of it is a different question from qualifying for it.
Argentina may not be the country for your money
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