Issue #001 · Week of July 6, 2026 · Free · Weekly
The Tax You Paid This Week, and the One the Investor Didn't
A new DR law hit your bank account this week. And the Heights just turned a page nobody in the old guard saw coming.
Welcome to Criollo News, the bridge between here and home, de aquí y de allá. This week the DR passed a new tax law, and the first piece of it already hit your bank account. Up here, the Heights turned a page. Let's get into it.
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The Bridge Story
The Tax You Paid This Week, and the One the Investor Didn't
Say you sent the July money home on Friday. Somewhere in that transfer, a little more stayed behind than it did last month. That was the first thing most Dominicans felt from a brand-new law, and it landed on their own money moving through their own bank.
On June 18, President Abinader signed Ley 30-26, the "fiscal modernization" law Congress passed on an urgent track, aiming to raise close to RD$50 billion a year for public finances.1 On July 3, the piece that touches everyone took effect: the tax on checks and electronic transfers rose from 0.15% to 0.20%.2
Policy people have a word for what matters here. It is incidence: who actually ends up carrying a tax, no matter whose name is on the receipt. A tax on transactions is broad-based by design. It applies to the act of moving money, not to how much you earn or own, so it does not bend to your ability to pay.
Now look at the other side of the same law. The tax on profit from selling real estate was cut from 25% to 10%, and the tax on mortgages is set to disappear by 2028.1 Those are breaks on the sale of assets, and assets sit mostly with the people who already have them. A little more from everyday transactions, a lot less from the property deal.
There is a name for the giveaway side too. Exemptions the state hands to tourism and free-zone investors are what budgets call tax expenditures, revenue the government chooses not to collect. In tourism alone, past studies put those breaks in the tens of billions of pesos a year.3 Ley 30-26 trims almost none of it.
The diaspora is what absorbs the gap. Dominicans abroad sent home close to US$11.9 billion last year, about 9% of the entire economy. That's more than the country earns from most single industries.4 And the law reaches senders directly: the airport departure tax jumped from US$20 to US$30, a 50% raise on every trip home.1 5
So the money that holds the island up gets taxed on its way out of the U.S., and taxed again on the trip home.
Do this week: before you send this month, compare two transfer services on the same amount. The gap between them is often bigger than the new tax. Reply and tell us what you found.
Why it matters in DR: the money families move gets taxed more, while the sale of property gets taxed less, as the basic basket nears RD$49,000 a month.6
Why it matters in Washington Heights: flying home just got 50% more expensive to leave, on top of the 1% the U.S. already takes on cash-sent remittances.
Sources
1. Ley 30-26 provisions and revenue target — Revista Mercado, Jun 19, 2026. 2. Transfer-tax effective date — Proceso, Jul 2, 2026. 3. Tourism tax-incentive estimates — Albasud / IDB free-zone studies. 4. 2025 remittances and share of GDP — Banco Central (via Infobae) and IDB. 5. Departure-tax figure — Revista Mercado, Jun 19, 2026. 6. Canasta básica ~RD$49,268 (May 2026) — Banco Central (via Infobae / Diario Libre).
Quick Hits
💵 The transfer tax that went up while nobody was looking
As of July 3, moving money through a DR bank costs a little more. The tax on checks and electronic transfers rose from 0.15% to 0.20%. Small per transaction, but flat, permanent, and paid by everyone with an account. The question nobody's asking: why does the everyday transaction go up while the real-estate windfall comes down?
✈️ Flying home costs more this summer
The tax to leave the country through the airport rose to US$30 from US$20, a 50% jump that lands squarely on the diaspora every trip back. It rides on top of the 1% the U.S. already charges on cash-sent remittances. Watch for: whether airlines quietly fold it into the fare so you never see the line item.
🗳️ The Heights just turned a page
Darializa Ávila Chevalier, an Afro-Dominican, Muslim, democratic-socialist organizer, beat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the District 13 primary by about 2,000 votes. Espaillat was the first Dominican in Congress. She is now all but certain to hold the seat in November. More in Sin Filtro. The question nobody's asking: who gets to say what "Dominican" looks like now?
Sin Filtro
It Was Never Really About Her
Let me say the part our own people don't want to say out loud.
When Espaillat's adviser went on that podcast and warned that Washington Heights was going to stop being "a bastion of the Dominican community" and become "a bastion of the Haitian, Muslim community," everybody named it fast. Racism. Islamophobia. The Haitian Times said it. City and State said it. And they weren't wrong.
But if we stop there, we let ourselves off easy.
Because what that man said into a microphone, a lot of us have felt quietly. And the thing underneath it is not really hate for Haitians, or for Muslims. It is fear of the mirror. It is a whole community that still cannot say plainly who it is.
I grew up in Washington Heights. I am not there right now to see this moment in person, and that is its own kind of ache. But I know that neighborhood in my body, and I know my people. We are proud of everything except the parts that are the most us. Our blackness. Our history. The roots that go back further than the flag.
So here is my filtro, off. Darializa Ávila Chevalier is Afro-Dominican and Muslim, and she won. The old script said that combination was a threat to being Dominican. She stood there as the exact thing they told us to fear, and the neighborhood chose her anyway. The old guard reached for the oldest weapon we carry, and for once it didn't fire.
Ask yourself why it stung so many of us. The newer generation looks at her and sees themselves. They embrace their blackness, their roots, all of it, out loud. And too many older Dominicans recoil from that same picture. Why might that be. That reaction is not pride. That is a people who were taught to be ashamed and never got to put it down.
I had a teacher in high school who told me that if you put every kind of person in the world together, you'd end up with something real close to a Dominican. That stuck with me for life. Our beauty was never one thing. It is our diversity, our blackness, our history, our resilience, our dancing. Not one flavor, not one color. Un sancocho con todo dentro.
Now, about the man himself. Adriano Espaillat was the first of us in Congress, and he came up undocumented like half our families did. He won't be the last, and we have him to thank for that door. Respect where respect is earned.
But being the first does not make you untouchable. You run on the values of your community and then you vote against them, and yes, this legislative system is rigged so nobody ever gets a clean vote and lives get traded in the name of "balancing the budget." I understand the machine. But that is not a permission slip to keep siding with the very people who despise where you came from. Somewhere in there you stopped fighting for us, and the neighborhood noticed.
So this is what I want you to take from it. Be proud of the whole plate. To the elders: the gatekeeping is over, and it lost. To the young ones already standing in their full selves: keep going, lead out loud, we are finally catching up to you.
Tú Qué Dices?
The old guard warned the neighborhood not to change. It changed anyway, and it chose someone who looks like where we actually come from. When you hear "that's not really Dominican," who taught us to say it, and who benefits when we keep saying it?
Best responses published next week, with your name if you want it.
Culture & Community — coming soon
Next issue, this is where we go home, set against a departure tax that now puts a price on exactly that ritual.
Las maletas con sobrepeso. La lista de encargos longer than your arm. Los primos waiting at the airport. And a US$30 line item to walk out of the country you were born in. Our Culture & Community section launches with the summer-trip issue.
Got a story about going back? Write us. La tuya might open the section.
One Ask
Forward this to one Dominican you know who left the Heights and still calls it home. No paid tier, no algorithm. Just word of mouth, the way news used to travel on the block. And if someone sent this to you:
Criollo News publishes weekly at criollonews.com · de aquí y de allá