Ecuador taxes money on the way out, not on the way in. The Impuesto a la Salida de Divisas — the ISD — has a general rate of 5% for 2026, and it applies whether the money leaves by transfer, by cheque, by card payment abroad or in the lining of your suitcase. There is an exemption, it is generous enough that most residents of Cuenca, Ecuador never pay a cent, and it is set as a multiple of a figure that changes every January.
That last sentence is the one to carry. Everything else here is detail.
Figures checked on 17 September 2026 against the SRI’s own ISD page.
What the ISD is levied on
The SRI defines the taxable event as the transfer, sending or movement of foreign currency abroad — «la transferencia, envío o traslado de divisas que se efectúen al exterior, sea en efectivo o a través del giro de cheques, transferencias, retiros o pagos de cualquier naturaleza».
Read the list properly, because the breadth of it is the point:
- In cash — money physically carried out of the country.
- By cheque.
- By transfer — a wire from your Ecuadorian account to an account at home.
- By withdrawal or payment of any nature — which is the clause that catches things people do not think of as sending money abroad.
It is a tax on the movement, not on the goods, not on income, and not on you. That distinction explains why it turns up in the price of an imported television as readily as in a wire to your own account. Why imported things cost what they do here runs through that chain.
The rate, and the rates that are not the rate
The general rate is 5%.
You will also encounter two lower ones, and they are almost certainly not yours:
- 2.5% on the import of certain raw materials and productive goods, by tariff subheading.
- 0% on certain fuel and pharmaceutical imports and specified operations.
Those reduced rates run off a list of tariff subheadings that gets revised. An update effective 1 June 2026 added around seventy subheadings, mostly agricultural, livestock, industrial and pharmaceutical. If you are importing goods commercially this list is your whole subject and you need an accountant rather than a blog. If you are a retiree wiring your own money home, none of it applies and your rate is 5%.
This is the fork where most of what has been written about the ISD becomes useless to you. The pages that rank on this subject are written for importers, because importers are the customers paying for the advice. The resident’s version of this question — what does it cost me to send my own money home — is small business for a law firm and is therefore mostly unwritten.
Three things the ISD is not
Worth clearing, because each one sends people looking for the wrong thing.
It is not a departure tax. Nobody stops you at the airport to collect it and it is not a fee on leaving the country. It attaches to currency, not to passengers, and a person flying out with nothing but a suitcase has no ISD event at all.
It is not an income tax. It does not care what the money is, where it came from, or whether you have already paid tax on it somewhere. It is charged on the act of moving it abroad. That is why it can apply to money you have owned for thirty years and to money that arrived last week, identically — what Ecuador does about foreign income is a completely separate question with completely separate rules.
It is not a capital control. It does not cap what you may move. It prices it. There is no permission to seek and no ceiling to argue about; above the exempt amount there is a rate, and that is the whole mechanism.
The exemption, and the number behind it
Two exemptions matter to a resident, and both are set at three unified basic salaries.
Cash carried out by travellers is exempt up to three times the SBU. The SRI’s wording covers Ecuadorian and foreign citizens alike: currency carried in cash up to «tres salarios básicos unificados del trabajador en general».
Transfers, sendings and movements abroad are likewise exempt up to an amount equivalent to three unified basic salaries.
The SBU for 2026 is $482 a month, set by the Ministerio del Trabajo through Acuerdo Ministerial MDT-2025-195 of 15 December 2025 and effective 1 January 2026. Three times that is $1,446.
Now notice something.
$1,446 is exactly the pensioner visa’s income threshold. It is the same multiple of the same number, set by the same annual decree, moving on the same date. Ecuador’s residency system and its exit tax are both priced off the minimum wage, and almost nothing written about either one mentions the other. The visa side of that multiple is its own post; the practical consequence is that a retiree whose income sits at the visa threshold can move approximately one month of it out of the country without the tax touching it.
Every one of these figures resets in January. The SBU for 2027 will be announced in December 2026, and when it moves, the visa threshold and the ISD exemption both move with it, automatically, with no separate announcement. Plan in multiples. “Three times the SBU” is true next year; “$1,446” is a 2026 fact with an expiry date on it.
What this means in practice for a resident
For most people reading this, the honest answer is: nothing, most months.
If what leaves Ecuador is occasional and modest — topping up an account at home, paying a bill in your own country, a transfer to a family member — you are likely inside the exemption and the tax is a thing you have read about rather than a thing you pay.
Where it becomes real is at the edges, and there are three of them:
- Moving a lump sum home. Selling something, closing an account, leaving the country. This is the one people meet unprepared, and it is the reason the tax belongs in an exit plan rather than in a monthly budget.
- Card payments to foreign merchants. The taxable event includes payments of any nature, which is a category worth understanding rather than guessing at — ask your institution how it treats a foreign-currency card payment, in writing, before you assume.
- Anything at scale or on a business footing. At which point this stops being a blog question. Name your contador and ask them, because the declaration and withholding mechanics here are not something to work out from a summary.
The site’s standing rule applies with full force: this is reporting, not tax advice. I have read the SRI’s page; I am not your accountant, and the ISD has exemptions, procedures and withholding rules I have not walked through because I have not needed to.
What to do before you need this
Three things, none of which requires an adviser.
Know where the current figures live. The rate, the taxable event and the exemptions are all on the SRI’s own ISD page. That is the source; this post is a reading of it on one dated morning.
Check the SBU every January. It is announced in December, published in the Registro Oficial, and it moves the exemption. A single search each January keeps every threshold on this site current for you.
Plan the exit before you plan the entry. If you may one day move a substantial sum out of Ecuador, that is a thing to understand while you are calm and years away from doing it, rather than in the month you are leaving. Getting money in has its own frictions, and they are almost entirely different frictions — which is the single most useful thing to know about money in this country. In and out are not symmetric. Nothing taxes the arrival. Something taxes the departure. Build the budget accordingly.