Panama Short Stay Visa for Remote Workers
Work from Panama, legally, for up to 18 months
A dollar-priced base in your own time zone, for anyone who can show $3,000 a month from clients or an employer abroad.
Here's who clears the bar, what filing really costs once a lawyer is involved, and the catch that decides whether this fits.
The 180-day question
A tourist stamp isn't a work status
Americans and Canadians get waved into Panama for up to 180 days on their passports alone. No form, no fee, no lawyer. So the honest first question about this permit is why anyone files at all.
Two reasons. First, the legal one: an entry stamp admits you as a visitor, and Panamanian immigration lawyers agree that answering your Seattle employer's email from a balcony here isn't what a visitor stamp covers, even though the money never touches Panama. This permit is that arrangement written down.
The other is arithmetic. Six months isn't a year, and the 180 days don't stretch. People used to fix that with a weekend in Costa Rica and a fresh stamp on Monday. It works less well now. Immigration tracks entries and exits, and lawyers report travelers getting turned around for living here on back-to-back tourist entries.
Want one long winter? The stamp is fine. Want eighteen months and a card with your name on it? This is the door.
Before the paperwork, the arithmetic
$3,000
A month, from outside Panama
Salary or invoices, as long as nobody paying you is Panamanian
9 + 9
Months, then one renewal
After that you change visa category or you go home
$300
What the government charges
A lawyer is required on top, so budget closer to $1,800
0%
Panamanian tax on foreign income
The IRS is a separate conversation, and it doesn't go away
The paperwork
Proving the money came from somewhere else
The income test is the easy part. You need $36,000 a year on paper, backed by bank statements plus either an employer letter or the contracts behind your invoices.
The two profiles split underneath that. On a payroll, your company writes a letter on its own letterhead confirming your role, your pay, the remote arrangement, and that it'll fly you home if something goes wrong. Working for yourself, you skip that and show a business registered outside Panama plus a notarized declaration naming your clients and what they pay you.
Then there's the sworn statement that you won't take work inside Panama. It's not a formality. That promise is the entire legal basis for the permit.
- Every foreign document needs an apostille and a certified Spanish translation, three or four weeks before you can file
- Police clearance and a health certificate are in the stack, and the clearance expires, so don't pull it early
- A Panamanian attorney files it under a notarized power of attorney. You can't walk it in yourself
- The insurance has to be a real international policy valid in Panama for the whole stay. Trip insurance gets rejected
Short Stay/Digital Nomad Visa
Designed for remote workers and digital nomads. Allows a stay of up to 9 months, renewable once for a total of 18 months. Not a pathway to permanent residency.
- Government cost
- $300
- Processing time
- ~30 days
- Timeline
- Temporary (up to 18 months)
- Difficulty
- Easy
Key requirements
- Proof of remote employment or income
- Valid passport
- Health insurance valid in Panama
- Migration fee application and payment
About that data card
Take the 30 days on that card as the fast end of a wide range: published guides say 30 to 60 business days, and a Panama City firm that files these puts a complete case at three to six months. Add the apostille run beforehand and plan on half a year from decision to card. The requirement list is also shorter than the real one, skipping the $36,000 income floor, police clearance, health certificate and sworn declaration about local work.
Month 18
The ceiling is real, and it's the whole design
Panama files this under non-resident. You get a card and legal basis to work remotely. You don't get residency. The permit ends at the end of the second nine months, and you can't restart the cycle.
That isn't a loophole somebody forgot to close. Panama already sells residency four or five ways and would rather you bought one of those. Read these eighteen months as a paid trial, long enough to pick a neighborhood, find a doctor, survive a rainy season and learn whether you like it here, including a hard date that forces a decision.
Here's the catch, and it's worth knowing on day one. The exits cost real money. The pension route wants a guaranteed lifetime income. Friendly Nations wants $200,000 in property or a term deposit, or a job with a Panamanian company. The investor route starts at $300,000. None of them is a $3,000 paycheck.
If the plan is to stay, price the next visa around month nine, not month seventeen. Panamanian paperwork doesn't hurry.
What living here is like in practice
You already have the currency
Panama runs on the US dollar. Nothing to convert, nothing to hedge, no bad month for the rent.
The clock barely moves
Panama sits on Eastern time all year and skips daylight saving, so it matches New York in winter and trails it an hour in summer.
A short hop home
Tocumen fans out across the hemisphere, and Miami is three hours out when someone gets sick.
Fiber is cheap
A hundred megabits runs in the thirties a month in the capital, with 5G in the newer districts for backup.
Power is the weak link
Outages run from a couple a month to a few a week depending where you land. Keep a battery and a second SIM.
You're filing alone
No dependent category here. A partner needs their own qualifying income, or the family goes on a different visa.
Money
Untaxed here, still filing at home
Only money made inside Panama is taxable here. Your salary from a company in Denver, invoices to clients in London, dividends from your brokerage back home: none of that is Panamanian-sourced, so none of it gets taxed. It works exactly the way it sounds.
What trips Americans up is the second layer. Nothing about living here suspends a U.S. filing obligation, and the exclusions and credits expats lean on still have to be earned test by test. One quirk catches people: the foreign tax credit is no use to you, because there's no Panamanian tax to credit against. The exclusion is the tool that might help, and it has presence rules of its own.
Watch the calendar for a second reason. Cross 183 days inside the country in a tax year and Panama can treat you as tax resident, which changes your paperwork here even when the territorial rule still spares your foreign income. On an eighteen-month permit you're going to cross it. Get it in front of a cross-border accountant early, and keep a day count you can prove.
Three calls worth making first
Freedom Panama
Panama Relocation Specialist
Freedom Panama sits in Panama City and walks Americans through the immigration file and the first weeks on the ground. The law makes a licensed local firm mandatory here, so start with people who file these every week.
ExpatInsure
Global Health Insurance
ExpatInsure arranges international health coverage that holds up in Panama for the full stay. Panamanian firms flag this as the line applicants get wrong, and a rejected policy sends the file back.
Flamingo Compliance | Tax Residency and Visa Tracker Platform
Tax Residency and Visa Tracker Platform
Flamingo Compliance tracks presence and tax residency across borders. With a 183-day line to watch and a permit that expires on a fixed date, a tool that counts for you beats a calendar you mean to update.
Straight answers on the remote worker visa
Can my spouse and kids come with me?
Not on this permit. It has no dependent category, so each adult has to qualify on their own $3,000 a month. Families relocating together look at the Pensionado or Friendly Nations routes instead, both of which do include dependents.
Will I pay tax in Panama as a digital nomad?
Not on foreign income. Panama taxes only what's earned inside the country, so a salary or invoices paid from abroad stay untaxed. Americans still file a US return every year, and passing 183 days in Panama in a tax year can make you tax resident, which is worth raising with a cross-border accountant.
What does the Panama digital nomad visa cost?
The government charges $250 to file and $50 for the card, so $300 in official fees. Panamanian law requires a licensed local attorney to submit it, and firms quote roughly $1,000 to $1,500. Apostilles, translations and your health policy are on top.
How much do I need to earn for Panama's digital nomad visa?
The floor is $3,000 a month, which works out to $36,000 over a year, and all of it has to come from outside Panama. You can meet it as an employee of a foreign company or as a freelancer billing foreign clients. There's no age limit, no degree requirement, no nationality restriction.
Do I need this visa if Americans already get 180 days?
Not for a long visit. The 180-day entry stamp is yours on arrival and costs nothing. But a visitor stamp isn't work authorization, and it doesn't stretch to 18 months. If you want a year and a half with a card in your wallet, this is the clean way.
How long can I stay on Panama's remote worker visa?
Nine months, plus one nine-month renewal, for 18 months total. That ceiling is firm. You can't run the cycle twice, and the permit never turns into residency, so you'd need a different visa category to stay longer.
Can I work for a Panamanian company on this visa?
No. Every applicant signs a sworn statement that they won't accept work or service offers inside Panama, and that promise is what the permit rests on. Taking local clients puts your status at risk. A job with a Panamanian employer runs through Friendly Nations or a professional visa instead.
How long does approval take?
Estimates run from about 30 days to six months after everything is filed, and the spread depends on the firm and the season. Apostilles and translations add three or four weeks before you file, so give yourself half a year from decision to card.
Eighteen months is enough to find out
Tell us what you earn, where your clients are and how long you want to be gone. We'll say whether this permit or a residency route gets you there cheaper.
Why not you?