Buy in your own name, or through a Paraguayan SRL? For most single-home buyers, the answer is your own name.

A foreigner can hold title to Paraguayan real estate directly, in their own name, with the same rights as a citizen — no residency, no local partner, no nominee, no company. The right is statutory: Ley 117/91 guarantees foreign investors equal treatment with nationals, and title is inscribed in your personal name at the Dirección General de los Registros Públicos (DGRP) (Ley 117/91).

For a single home, a weekend place at the lake, or one apartment you intend to live in or hold long, direct ownership wins on almost every axis: zero setup cost, no annual accountant, no corporate filings, and a faster close. There is no Paraguayan tax penalty for owning real estate personally — you still pay the same 1% Impuesto Inmobiliario on fiscal value and the same closing costs you would pay buying into a company.

Verdict: if you are buying one property to live in or hold, own it in your own name and skip the SRL entirely.

An SRL — *Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada* — is Paraguay's standard limited-liability company, the local equivalent of an LLC. It needs at least two shareholders (called *socios*), and there is no minimum capital requirement, unlike an SA (usemultiplier — company registration). Foreigners can own 100% of the shares; you do not need a Paraguayan partner. One requirement that catches people out: at least one legal representative must be resident in Paraguay for service of notices.

The company is a separate legal person. It owns the property; you own the company. That single fact is what unlocks the liability, multi-owner, rental-routing and succession use cases below — and it is also what creates the cost and paperwork. An SRL files annual income-tax returns and monthly IVA (10%) declarations, keeps formal accounting books, and maintains a beneficial-ownership (UBO) register (commenda — annual compliance).

Worth knowing: since Ley 6480/2019 Paraguay also has the EAS (*Empresa por Acciones Simplificada*), which allows a single shareholder and can be incorporated online through SUACE, often faster and cheaper than an SRL (Wolters Kluwer — Ley 6480). For a solo foreign buyer who wants a corporate wrapper, the EAS frequently makes more sense than an SRL — it sidesteps the two-shareholder rule. We model both before you commit.

The comparison below is the version we walk clients through. Read the right-hand column as "reasons to incur cost and paperwork" — if none of them apply to you, the left column is your answer.

Verdict: the SRL buys you a liability wall, multi-owner clarity, cleaner rental accounting and an easier estate transfer — pay for it only when you actually need one of those.

An SRL caps your exposure at the company's assets. If the property is commercial, tenanted, under construction, or otherwise carries a real chance of a claim — a tenant injury, a contractor dispute, an environmental issue on rural land — holding it inside a company means a judgment hits the company, not your personal bank accounts and other assets.

For a single owner-occupied home, this is mostly theoretical and rarely worth US$ 3,000+ a year. The risk that justifies the wall climbs with: the number of tenants, whether you run short-term rentals at volume, whether the asset is income-producing commercial, and whether you are doing pre-construction or development where contractor liability is live.

Verdict: ring-fence income-producing or higher-risk assets in an SRL; don't bother for a home you live in.

If you are buying with a business partner, a group of investors, or family members who are not your spouse, holding the property as named co-owners on a single title gets messy fast — every sale, refinance or buy-out needs every name to sign, and a falling-out can freeze the asset.

An SRL converts that into shares. Ownership percentages are explicit, a partner can be bought out by transferring shares rather than re-deeding the property, and the company's statutes can set rules for decisions, distributions and exits up front. For a two-to-five-person investment group this alone often justifies the structure. For a married couple, by contrast, joint personal title is simpler and Paraguay's marital-property regime already handles the split.

Verdict: 3+ unrelated owners → SRL; a couple → joint personal title.

Rental income earned in Paraguay is Paraguay-source and is taxed locally either way; the territorial regime that zero-rates *foreign* income does not apply to rent from a Paraguayan property.

Held personally, rent is taxed under IRP (Paraguay's personal income tax, 8–10%) plus IVA at 5% on residential leases (GoParaguay — tax system, PwC — other taxes). Held in an SRL, net rental profit is taxed at the flat IRE 10%, and you only pay dividend tax — IDU 8% if you are a Paraguay tax resident, 15% if non-resident — when you actually distribute profit out of the company (PwC — corporate income).

The corporate route lets you deduct real expenses (management, repairs, depreciation, interest) against rental income cleanly and defer the dividend layer by reinvesting. That matters when you own several units; it is overkill for one apartment netting a few hundred dollars a month, where the accountant's fee eats the benefit.

Verdict: a single rental → keep it personal; a portfolio of rentals → an SRL's deductions and deferral usually win. Model the actual numbers — cross-reference net-yield reality on moveparaguay.com before assuming the company pays off.

Paraguay has no inheritance tax and no wealth tax — a genuine estate-planning advantage (global property guide — inheritance). But the *process* matters. There is no notarial succession here: real estate owned personally by a deceased person must pass through a judicial succession (*juicio sucesorio*) before a Civil and Commercial Court judge, which is slow and costs lawyer and court fees. Heirs have one year from the death to file.

When the property sits inside an SRL, what your heirs inherit is shares, and transferring or pre-assigning company shares can be markedly simpler and faster than running a property through the courts — especially for foreign heirs who would otherwise have to litigate succession in a Paraguayan court from abroad. A company also lets you plan distributions and quotas across heirs in advance.

Note that Paraguayan succession law applies to Paraguay-located real estate regardless of your nationality, and forced-heirship rules apply; a local will and a structure designed together are how this is handled. Verdict: if you hold several properties or have heirs abroad, an SRL can spare them a Paraguayan probate — worth costing into the decision.

Forming an SRL means a lawyer and a notary: drafting the company statutes, signing the public deed (*escritura pública* under Ley 1307/87), registering with the DGRP and the tax office (SET), publishing in the official gazette, and getting a RUC tax number. All-in, expect roughly US$ 1,500–5,000 depending on who you use and the share capital, and weeks rather than days — the public deed still needs a wet signature or a power of attorney, which is the usual bottleneck for buyers who aren't yet in the country.

Notarial and registry fees alone typically run PYG 3,000,000–6,000,000 (about US$ 410–820), with gazette publication adding around PYG 1,500,000 (~US$ 205) (jarniascyril — Paraguay company guide 2026). Then the company has to be kept alive: monthly bookkeeping, annual IRE returns, IVA filings, and — once gross turnover passes about US$ 1.3 million a year — a mandatory external audit (commenda — annual compliance).

If you want a corporate wrapper but only one owner and a faster, cheaper path, the EAS registers online via SUACE in around 1–2 weeks (escalada — open an EAS). Verdict: budget the upkeep, not just the setup — an idle SRL holding one home is pure cost.

An SRL is the right corporate form for the overwhelming majority of foreign property buyers who need a company at all. You step up to a Sociedad Anónima (SA) — Paraguay's full corporation with shares — when you are raising outside capital, taking on many or changing investors, or running an operating business at scale where transferable shares and a board matter. Larger institutional deals (think US$ 5m+ developments, or a project applying for tax incentives under Ley 60/90) often sit in an SA.

A branch of a foreign company is for an existing overseas entity that wants to operate in Paraguay directly rather than create a new local company. It is rarely the right vehicle for a foreign individual buying a home or a couple of rentals — it carries home-entity exposure and heavier reporting.

Verdict: SRL for the property buyer, EAS for the solo buyer, SA only when you're raising capital or running at scale. For the commercial and incentive side of this, see our commercial mandate.