A new wave of public debate has swept the Dominican Republic after the Ministry of Finance and Economy unveiled a $10 increase in international departure taxes for all travelers, including citizens, residents, and foreign visitors. At the heart of this renewed discussion is a long-running unresolved issue: the automatic $10 tourist card fee still applied to Dominican nationals at the time of airline ticket purchase, more than a year after a landmark court ruling ordered the fee be scrapped entirely for citizens of the country.
The roots of the current gridlock stretch back to 2022, when Resolution 217-2022 first formalized that Dominican citizens should no longer be required to pay the tourist card fee. Yet, due to persistent technical gaps in major airlines’ global billing systems, the charge has remained embedded in automatic ticket pricing, forcing affected Dominican passengers to go through a separate claims process to request a refund from the General Directorate of Internal Taxes (DGII).
Multiple legal challenges have failed to speed up the process of reform. In 2023, a coalition of major global carriers including JetBlue, Copa Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and Air France brought an appeal against the new fee framework to the Superior Administrative Court, only to see their challenge rejected. That same year, Dominican citizens launched a constitutional challenge against the DGII’s refund regulations governing the tourist card fee.
The Dominican Constitutional Court ultimately sided with citizens, ruling that Dominican nationals cannot be classified as tourists in their own country, and thus the fee violates their legal rights. However, in a decision that has drawn widespread criticism, the court chose to suspend the immediate implementation of its ruling, granting state agencies an extended timeline to update outdated tax and billing infrastructure.
According to the Civil Aviation Board (JAC), full operational elimination of the automatic tourist card fee for citizens requires close coordination between the National Congress and the DGII, since the Constitutional Court’s ruling supersedes all existing administrative regulations. Though the final judgment was handed down in December 2023, the official implementation window only opens on May 18, 2026, following formal notification to all relevant tax and judicial bodies.
From that opening date, the Dominican government will have a two-year period to build and roll out a new system that blocks automatic collection of the tourist card fee from Dominican citizens. Parallel to this technical overhaul, the National Congress is expected to pass the targeted legislative reforms needed to bring national law into alignment with the Constitutional Court’s ruling.
For the entire multi-year transition period, the unpopular “pay first, claim later” system will remain in effect. The court justified the extended delay by noting that airlines lack a reliable mechanism to verify passenger nationality at the point of ticket purchase, meaning immediate automatic exemption would require disruptive overhauls of airline ticketing infrastructure that cannot be completed quickly.
Public frustration has boiled over in recent weeks following the government’s announcement of the new $10 departure tax hike, a core part of the administration’s anti-crisis economic plan to boost state revenue. Finance Minister Magín Díaz projected that the tax adjustment will generate between 7 billion and 8 billion Dominican pesos as part of the government’s broader revenue-raising strategy. While the new departure tax applies to all passengers leaving the country, Dominican citizens will retain their right to claim refunds for the erroneously charged tourist card fee until the full legal and technical overhaul is completed in 2028.