How to Start a Small Business in Cartagena: A 2026 Guide for Foreigners (and Locals)

Last updated: May 2026. Colombia has spent the last decade making it easier, on paper, to start a company. The real experience for someone with a laptop, a cédula in their pocket, and a small idea worth registering is genuinely workable. It is also more paperwork-and-bank-visits than the glossy "Colombia: easy place to do business" pitch suggests. This guide walks through every step of forming and running a small business in Cartagena in 2026, from picking your legal vehicle, through registering at the Cámara de Comercio de Cartagena, to your first payroll and a tax regime that does not bury you. The SAS, tax, and registration mechanics apply anywhere in Colombia. Where Cartagena differs, the local chamber, the city's ICA rates, and the tourism economy that drives so much of the small-business scene here, it is called out.

Who this guide is for

Three audiences:

• Foreigners who already hold (or are getting) a cédula and want to register a real local business
• Colombians starting their first SAS or operating as a persona natural comerciante
• Freelancers about to cross from informal to "proper company" territory

What this guide is not: a substitute for a contador (accountant) or a lawyer. You will need both. What it does is get you to the point where you know what to ask them, what they should be doing for you, and what each step actually costs in COP.

Choosing your legal vehicle: why the SAS is the default

For a one- or two-person business, you have three realistic options:

Persona Natural Comerciante (sole proprietor): the simplest. You are the business. You register with the Cámara de Comercio as a persona natural comerciante, get a RUT under your cédula, and that is it. Income from the business is your personal income. Cheap to set up, under COP 100.000 (about USD 25 at 4.000:1) in chamber fees if your declared assets are modest. The downside is real: no liability separation. If the business is sued, your personal assets are exposed.

SAS (Sociedad por Acciones Simplificada): the modern Colombian small-business workhorse, and the default vehicle for almost everyone reading this. It was created by Ley 1258 de 2008 specifically to make small companies easy. One shareholder is enough, you can be the only shareholder and the only legal representative. No minimum capital. You write the bylaws yourself. Liability is separated: the company has its own NIT, its own bank accounts, its own debts. Roughly nine in ten new small companies in Colombia register as an SAS, for good reason.

LTDA, S.A.: older corporate forms. Skip them unless your accountant or lawyer specifically says you need one. The SAS does everything they do with less paperwork and lower cost.

The rest of this guide assumes you are forming an SAS, because that is what almost everyone starting small in Cartagena should do.

Foreigners owning a Colombian company: cédula and visa

Your first decision is whether you can legally operate a business in Colombia at all. Three rough categories:

You hold a Colombian cédula, either a citizenship cédula or a cédula de extranjería tied to a Migrant or Resident visa: you can register a business with no special steps beyond the normal flow. You can be a shareholder, the legal representative, sign payroll, and operate normally.

You are on an active visa with a cédula de extranjería: same as above.

You are on a tourist permit (PIP) or have no visa: you can technically own shares in a Colombian company without a cédula, since share ownership is a property right, not a labor one. But you cannot legally act as the legal representative, sign contracts on the company's behalf, or work for it. In practice that means you either: (a) put a Colombian partner, spouse, friend, or hired apoderado in as legal representative, (b) qualify for an M-Inversionista visa (350 SMMLV minimum investment at 2026 SMMLV = COP 612.816.750, about USD 153.000 at 4.000:1), or (c) get a different M visa first (Nómada Digital, partner of a Colombian, and so on) plus a cédula, then form the company.

For most readers of this site, the practical path is: get a cédula first via whichever visa fits your situation, then register the business. The full visa picture is in our Cartagena visa guide.

Step 1: Reserve your business name in RUES

Go to consultanombre.rues.org.co, the unified RUES (Registro Único Empresarial y Social) name search. Type your proposed company name. If nothing identical comes back, you are probably clear.

Be more thorough by also searching the same name in trademarks via the SIC database at sic.gov.co. A clear chamber name does not guarantee you are not stepping on an existing trademark. For a pure local service business this is rarely an issue, but if you plan to use a distinctive brand, check.

You do not formally "reserve" a name the way you might in some countries. You confirm availability, then register the company under that name. The name becomes yours when the company exists.

Step 2: Draft and register the SAS estatutos

The SAS bylaws (estatutos) define:

• Company name and sigla (short form, for example "Mi Negocio SAS")
• Registered office address (a real address in your municipality, your apartment is fine if you actually work from there)
• Corporate purpose (objeto social): list every activity you might plausibly do, broad is better than narrow
• Term: set it to indefinido (indefinite) unless you have a reason not to
• Authorized, subscribed, and paid-in capital: you decide, COP 1.000.000 minimum works in practice
• Shareholders, share count, and share value
• Legal representative (you, if solo) and their powers
• Reserves and dividend rules

You do not need a notary for an SAS unless real estate is being contributed as capital. The Cámara de Comercio accepts a private document signed by the shareholders.

Two ways to do it:

1. Use the VUE template. The Ventanilla Única Empresarial at vue.gov.co has a guided wizard that produces compliant SAS bylaws, then files everything (chamber registration, RUT request, mercantile registration) in one online flow. This is the fastest, cheapest, and most foreigner-friendly path. You will need a digital signature (firma digital); VUE walks you through that. Cost: roughly COP 200.000 to 400.000 (about USD 50 to 100) for a small company, depending on declared capital.
2. Hire a lawyer. A typical fee in Cartagena for SAS formation runs COP 800.000 to 2.500.000 (about USD 200 to 625), depending on the lawyer. Worth it if you have multiple shareholders, special governance needs, or want bespoke bylaws.

After registration you receive the Certificado de Existencia y Representación Legal, the company's birth certificate. Print a fresh copy each time you open a bank account or sign a major contract; banks usually want one issued in the last 30 days.

Step 3: Register with the Camara de Comercio de Cartagena

The Cámara de Comercio de Cartagena is where your company legally comes into existence as a registered merchant. If you use the VUE flow above, the chamber registration happens inside that same online process. If you are doing it in person or through a lawyer, this is the office that processes your matrícula mercantil (mercantile registration) and issues your certificado.

What the chamber does for you at this step:

• Registers the SAS and its bylaws
• Assigns your matrícula mercantil number
• Forwards your registration data to DIAN for the RUT/NIT and to the city's Secretaría de Hacienda for ICA
• Issues the Certificado de Existencia y Representación Legal

Keep in mind the chamber registration is not a one-time event. You renew it every year (the Renovación de Matrícula Mercantil) before the end of March, and the fee scales with your declared assets. Miss it and your certificado can be suspended, which freezes you out of bank operations and contracts. Verify current hours and the address of the sede you plan to visit on the chamber's website before you go, branch hours and locations change.

Step 4: Get your NIT and RUT from DIAN

The RUT (Registro Único Tributario) is your tax registration with DIAN, Colombia's tax authority. The NIT (Número de Identificación Tributaria) is the resulting tax ID for the company. The VUE flow includes a RUT request, so for most people this happens automatically as part of registration.

If you are registering manually, do the RUT online at the DIAN portal (muisca.dian.gov.co). You will be assigned responsabilidades, codes for your tax obligations. Common ones for a small SAS:

• 05: Régimen Ordinario (income tax)
• 47: Régimen Simple (if you opt in, see below)
• 48: IVA (VAT), if you sell IVA-applicable goods or services
• 52: standard monthly information report

Print the RUT. You will show it constantly, to landlords, banks, payment processors, and clients.

Step 5: Open a business bank account

You need a separate company account. Mixing personal and company funds is the fastest way to make your contador's life unmanageable and to invite DIAN questions later.

The big four for small businesses in Cartagena are Bancolombia, BBVA, Davivienda, and Banco de Bogotá. All have decent online onboarding now, but you will usually still have to appear in person at a branch with:

• Original cédula and a notarized copy
• Cámara certificate (under 30 days old)
• RUT
• Initial deposit (varies, usually COP 100.000 to 500.000, about USD 25 to 125)
• For foreign legal representatives: passport plus cédula de extranjería. A tourist passport alone is usually rejected for company accounts.

Mistakes to avoid:

• Do not open the account in your personal name with a "ventas del negocio" note. It is a personal account, and it will not satisfy DIAN.
• Get the debit card enabled for online use immediately. Some Colombian bank cards default to "POS only", useless for paying AWS or Google Workspace. Ask for compra por internet activated at account opening.
• Set up tokens or app-based 2FA. You will be moving company money, so you want hardware or app-based authentication on every transfer.

For the deeper banking picture, the cash culture, and how transfers actually work in the city, see our Banking in Cartagena guide.

Step 6: IVA, ICA, and electronic invoicing

Three tax mechanics every Cartagena small business deals with from day one:

IVA (VAT). You are required to register for IVA if you sell IVA-applicable goods or services and your annual gross is above 3.500 UVT (roughly COP 178 millones). Below that you can be in No Responsable de IVA. The standard IVA rate is 19%. Some tourism services have specific treatment, ask your contador how it applies to your activity.

ICA (Impuesto de Industria y Comercio). This is the municipal business tax, charged on gross revenue at a rate that depends on your activity code (CIIU). It is paid to Cartagena's Secretaría de Hacienda Distrital. The Cámara forwards your registration, but verify your ICA registration is active. ICA rates in Cartagena are expressed por mil (per thousand of gross revenue) and vary by activity, lower for many professional services, higher for commerce and food. Confirm the exact rate for your CIIU code with the city or your contador, as the schedule is set by municipal acuerdo and changes.

Electronic invoicing (factura electrónica). Since 2022, electronic invoices are mandatory for almost all sales in Colombia. You must invoice through a DIAN-authorized provider; the common ones are Siigo, Alegra, Facture, World Office, and Helisa. Costs run from roughly COP 30.000 to 100.000 per month (about USD 7 to 25) depending on volume and features. Your contador usually has a preferred platform. The DIAN radian system also handles documento soporte (for purchases from non-billing suppliers) and nómina electrónica (electronic payroll) once you have employees.

The tourism angle: the RNT registry

Cartagena's small-business economy leans heavily toward tourism: hospitality, tours, transport, restaurants, and short-term rentals. If your business touches tourism, there is an extra registration most other businesses do not need.

The Registro Nacional de Turismo (RNT) is mandatory for tourism service providers in Colombia: hotels, hostels, guesthouses, short-term rental operators, tour operators, travel agencies, tourist transport, and certain restaurants and bars in tourist zones. You register the RNT through the Cámara de Comercio (the chamber administers it on behalf of MinCIT), it is renewed annually, and it has to be active for you to operate legally and to advertise as a tourism business.

Two practical notes specific to Cartagena:

• Short-term rentals. If you are running apartments as short-stay rentals, the RNT generally applies to you, and propiedad horizontal (building) rules may also restrict or prohibit short-term letting. Check the building's reglamento before you build a business around a unit.
• The tourism contribution. Registered tourism providers are subject to the contribución parafiscal for tourism promotion. Your contador should factor this in.

If your business has nothing to do with tourism, a software shop, a consultancy, a clinic, you can ignore the RNT entirely.

Step 7: Hiring, and what seguridad social really costs

The economics of hiring in Colombia are heavy, and they are the reason most very-small businesses run for years on contractors (prestación de servicios) rather than employees.

For a salaried employee at the minimum wage (2026 SMMLV: COP 1.750.905, about USD 438 per month at 4.000:1), the all-in cost to the employer is roughly 1,5 times the base salary, call it approximately COP 2.625.000 (about USD 656) per month once you include the prestaciones sociales listed below. The roughly 52% loaded on top is:

• Pensión (pension): 12% employer, 4% employee
• Salud (health): 8,5% employer, 4% employee
• ARL (workplace risk insurance): 0,522% to 6,96% depending on activity, most office work is in the lowest tier
• Parafiscales (SENA 2%, ICBF 3%, Caja de Compensación 4%), some are exempt for businesses below a revenue threshold
• Cesantías (severance fund): one month of salary per year worked, paid annually
• Intereses sobre cesantías: 12% on cesantías
• Prima de servicios: one month of salary per year worked, paid in two halves (June and December)
• Vacaciones: 15 working days per year

This stack of prestaciones sociales is the same logic that applies when you hire household help, and the clearest plain-language walk-through of how cesantías, prima, and the rest are calculated is in our guide to the salary for a Colombian maid or domestic worker. Read that to understand the prestaciones math before your first hire, the numbers scale, the rules do not change.

A contrato de prestación de servicios (independent contractor) avoids all of that, but it has to be a real contractor relationship, with the contractor managing their own tools, hours, and clients. DIAN and the Ministerio de Trabajo can reclassify a sham contractor as an employee and require you to pay back-benefits. If your "contractor" works only for you, on your schedule, with your equipment, in your space, they are an employee. Pay them like one.

For a first hire, many Cartagena service businesses use a contrato a término fijo (fixed-term) for the first year, then convert to término indefinido (indefinite). Indefinite contracts can include a período de prueba (probation) of up to two months.

Step 8: Your digital presence

Most new Cartagena small businesses underestimate how much custom comes from a clean Google search result with a real website, rather than just an Instagram account. For tourism-facing operators in the Centro, Bocagrande, Getsemaní, or Manga, the booking decision happens on a phone screen, and the customer is comparing three options before they message anyone. The website (and the Google listing it ties to) is where they decide.

The practical baseline:

• A domain in .com for international visitors, or .co for a Colombian audience, or both.
• A site that loads fast on mobile, where almost all of your traffic is.
• A professional email at your domain (not a gmail address).
• A Ficha de Google (Google Business Profile) with a real address, phone, and recent photos. For tourism: also the OTAs (Booking, Airbnb, Hostelworld) but never as a substitute for your own site.
• Spanish and English copy if you target both audiences. Tourism almost always means both.

If you are building this yourself, WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, or a static site on Cloudflare Pages all work, with tradeoffs in Spanish-language SEO and Colombian payment integrations (PSE, Bancolombia, Wompi).

Picking a tax regime: Regimen Simple vs Ordinario

Colombia introduced the Régimen Simple de Tributación in 2019 specifically to give small businesses a less painful tax setup. It rolls income tax, ICA (in participating municipalities, Cartagena participates), and a portion of the parafiscal load into a single bimonthly payment based on a flat percentage of gross revenue.

Régimen Simple eligibility, 2026:

• Annual gross revenue below 100.000 UVT (about COP 5,1 mil millones, roughly USD 1,275 millones)
• The single shareholder must be a persona natural, not a corporate shareholder
• Activities limited to eligible CIIU codes, most service businesses qualify; some financial services, mining, and certain regulated activities do not
• No conflicting international tax-residency obligations

If you qualify, the rates run roughly 2% to 8% of gross revenue depending on activity. For a software, IT, or consulting business, the Simple rate is around 4,9% of gross revenue, and that single number replaces income tax, ICA, and a portion of parafiscales.

The math is usually favorable for service businesses, particularly low-cost, high-margin ones. For a high-cost business (restaurants, retail with inventory), the Régimen Ordinario often comes out cheaper because you can deduct your real costs. You opt in or out of Simple once a year, by January 31 for that calendar year. Get a contador to run your numbers both ways before deciding. If you expect to be a Colombian tax resident, also read our Colombia tax residency guide, the 183-day rule changes how your worldwide income is treated and feeds directly into how you should structure this.

Why a contador is effectively mandatory

You will need one. Treating the contador as optional is the single most expensive mistake a new Colombian business makes. DIAN and ICA filings are bimonthly or monthly, and the penalties for late filing compound fast. A bad contador will quietly bury you in fines you do not see until DIAN sends a notification 18 months later. Beyond the penalty risk, by law most companies above a small size threshold need a registered Contador Público to sign their financial statements and tax filings.

What to look for:

• Contador Público registered with the JCC (Junta Central de Contadores), verifiable by their tarjeta profesional number
• Direct experience with SAS and Régimen Simple
• Familiar with foreign-owned companies if relevant, there are different filing nuances around Banco de la República, FATCA, and CRS reporting
• Familiar with tourism and the RNT if your business is in hospitality or short-term rentals
• Sends you the receipt of every filing, DIAN's confirmation pages with timestamps. If they cannot show you proof of filing, find someone else

Typical fees in Cartagena for a one-person SAS with low volume: COP 250.000 to 500.000 (about USD 60 to 125) per month. Higher with employees (payroll filings) or international operations.

Realistic monthly costs for a one-person SAS

One founder, no employees, working from home in Cartagena, 2026. USD figures at 4.000:1.

Add an annual Renovación de Matrícula Mercantil (chamber renewal) of COP 200.000 to 1.000.000 in March, depending on declared assets. If your business is in tourism, add the annual RNT renewal and the tourism contribution. If you hire one minimum-wage employee at the 2026 SMMLV, add roughly COP 2.625.000 (about USD 656) per month all-in.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Mixing personal and company money. The SAS is a separate legal person. Treat it as one.
• Skipping a RUT update when something changes. An address change, a new activity, or a new shareholder all require a RUT update with DIAN, usually within one month.
• Not renewing the chamber registration in March. Late renewals incur fees and can suspend your certificado. Mark the calendar.
• Forgetting the RNT for a tourism business. Running a hostel, tour, or short-term rental without an active RNT is a common Cartagena mistake and it carries sanctions.
• Treating contractors as employees. If they only work for you, on your schedule, with your equipment, they are an employee. DIAN and Mintrabajo can force you to pay back-benefits going years.
• Forgetting electronic invoicing. Factura electrónica is mandatory; manual paper invoices are not legally valid for most sales.
• No backup of company documents. Bylaws, certificates, RUT, and contracts belong in a cloud folder you control. Banks and DIAN ask for them more often than you expect.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to register an SAS in Cartagena?
Online via VUE: roughly 24 to 72 hours from submission to receiving your certificado. With a lawyer: 5 to 7 business days end to end. The slowest part is usually getting the digital signature certificate that VUE requires.

Can I register an SAS while on a tourist permit (PIP)?
You can be a shareholder, but you cannot be the legal representative or actively manage the business without a visa and cédula. In practice, put a Colombian partner in as legal rep, or get a visa first.

Do I need an office?
No. The registered address can be your home. A coworking-space mailbox also works.

Do I really need the RNT?
Only if your business provides a tourism service: lodging, tours, tourist transport, travel agency, short-term rentals, and certain restaurants and bars in tourist zones. If you are in a non-tourism activity, you do not.

Should I register for IVA?
You are required to register for IVA if you sell IVA-applicable goods or services and your annual gross is above 3.500 UVT (about COP 178 millones). Below that you can be in No Responsable de IVA. Régimen Simple changes some of this, ask your contador.

Can I keep the SAS dormant?
Yes, but you still owe the annual chamber renewal and minimum DIAN filings. Cost to keep a dormant SAS alive: about COP 300.000 to 500.000 (about USD 75 to 125) per year.

What is the difference between razón social and nombre comercial?
Razón social is your legal company name (for example "Mi Negocio SAS"). Nombre comercial is the brand name you trade under. They can be the same or different. If different, register the nombre comercial with the SIC for trademark protection.

How do I close an SAS?
Three steps: shareholders approve dissolution; appoint a liquidator (the legal rep is fine); settle debts and file the acta de liquidación final with the chamber. The chamber issues a certificado de cancelación; DIAN gets a final RUT cancellation. Time: three to six months minimum.

Further reading on this site

• Tax Residency in Colombia: The 183-Day Rule (2026)
• Banking and Money in Cartagena: The Complete Expat Guide (2026)
• Salary for a Colombian Maid or Domestic Worker (2026)
• Colombia Visa Guide: Every Option for Living in Cartagena

This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice. Colombian regulations change. Verify current SMMLV, UVT values, IVA treatment, and Cartagena ICA rates with DIAN, the Cámara de Comercio de Cartagena, and a registered contador before acting on the numbers above. If you are launching, hire a contador before your first month closes; the cost is small compared with fixing a missed filing later.