The 4x1000 in Colombia 2026: GMF Exemptions and How to Move Money Without Paying It

If you live in Colombia and move money between bank accounts, you will meet the 4x1000. It is small per transaction and easy to ignore, right up to the point where you move a serious sum and it costs you real money. The rules are not complicated, but almost every English explanation of them online is missing the one exemption that matters most. This guide works from the Estatuto Tributario directly.

What the 4x1000 Is

The Gravamen a los Movimientos Financieros (GMF), universally called the 4x1000, is a national tax on certain financial transactions. Article 872 of the Estatuto Tributario sets the rate at four per thousand, which is 0.4%. That article's current wording comes from article 214 of Ley 1819 de 2016.

Four per thousand sounds trivial. On a 50,000,000 peso transfer it is 200,000 pesos, and it applies every time the money moves.

What Actually Triggers It

It inverts the assumption most people arrive with. They worry about bringing money into Colombia, which this tax does not touch. What costs them is moving it around once it is here.

One caveat on that article: the definition above is its opening paragraph, and Ley 788 de 2002 added several more taxable events beneath it. Transfers of rights in collective portfolios between co-owners, disposals through collection agreements, and debits to accounting or other account types in order to pay a third party are all caught, even where no checking or savings account moves at all. Every one of those additions is still a form of outflow, so none of them taxes money arriving, but for an ordinary personal banking setup the first paragraph is what governs and you should not read it as the whole of article 871.

The 350 UVT Marked Account

Article 879 numeral 1 exempts withdrawals that do not exceed 350 UVT per month. At the 2026 UVT of 52,374 pesos, that is 18,330,900 pesos a month.

Four details in the statute that guides routinely get wrong:

• It is a monthly running total, not a per-transaction cap. Withdrawals accumulate against the allowance. The statute exempts withdrawals that do not exceed 350 UVT in the month, so movement beyond that point stops being covered, however small the individual transaction.
• You must nominate the account. The holder has to tell the institution that this account is the one benefiting from the exemption. It is not automatic. If you hold accounts at several banks you must choose one, across the whole financial system.
• It applies to a savings account, an electronic deposit or a prepaid card. A plain checking account is not in numeral 1's list, so do not assume your cuenta corriente can carry the mark.
• The account must have a single holder. Numeral 1 says the exemption applies only where the account "pertenezca a un único titular". A joint account cannot carry the mark, which catches out couples who open everything together when they arrive.

Digital Wallets Have a Much Smaller Allowance

This is the figure most likely to catch you out, because it is under a fifth of the headline 350 UVT and the two allowances are easy to conflate. Usefully, they are not mutually exclusive: paragraph 4 states that using numeral 1's benefit on an electronic deposit does not exclude the numerals 25 and 27 benefit.

Which cap applies to a given app depends on how that specific product is licensed, and that is not something you can tell from the marketing. A wallet you use for daily spending can burn through 3.4 million pesos of allowance faster than you would expect.

The Same-Bank Exemption Most Guides Miss

The limit is the phrase "same establishment". The identical transfer between your account at Bancolombia and your account at Davivienda is an ordinary outgoing transfer, and if you have used up your monthly allowance it is taxed.

Structuring Your Accounts

1. Mark your highest-turnover eligible account. That covers 18,330,900 pesos of outgoing movement a month at no cost.
2. Keep your other accounts at the same bank. Transfers among them ride numeral 14 with no ceiling at all.
3. Treat cross-bank transfers as the expensive move. Above your monthly allowance, that is where the 0.4% actually bites.
4. Collect the certificate. Whatever you do pay, half of it is deductible. See below.

None of this is aggressive planning. It is using two exemptions the statute writes down plainly, and the cost of not knowing them is simply higher than it needs to be.

The Rule That Is Changing, Slowly

Article 881-1, added by article 65 of Ley 2277 de 2022, requires supervised institutions to adopt an information system that lets the 350 UVT exemption work without having to mark a single account. In principle that ends the one-account restriction and lets you spread the allowance across your own accounts at different institutions.

Its transitional paragraph is the part to read carefully. The article applies only once the institutions have actually developed that system, with a deadline of two years from the law entering into force, and it states that until the system is running, numeral 1 continues to apply. That deadline has already passed, but the practical answer still depends on whether your particular bank built it. Until yours tells you otherwise, plan on one marked account.

Deducting Half of It

Article 115 makes 50% of the GMF actually paid during the year deductible, explicitly whether or not it relates to your economic activity, provided it is properly certified by the withholding agent. That last clause is the one people miss: ask your bank for the GMF certificate when you file. See our Colombian taxes guide for how deductions fit into the return.

If You Are a New Tax Resident

You generally become a Colombian tax resident after 183 days in any 365-day period, which is covered in our taxes guide. That is usually the same period in which you start moving larger sums into the country: savings, proceeds from selling investments at home, remote-work income.

The mistake worth avoiding is opening accounts at several different banks because each one had a good offer, then discovering that shifting money between them costs 0.4% every time. If you expect to run more than one account, there is a real argument for keeping them at the same institution purely so numeral 14 applies. Ask about GMF marking when you open the first one, not a year later. Our guide to opening a Colombian bank account covers the paperwork, and transferring money to Colombia covers getting the funds here in the first place.

If the money is going into a fixed-term deposit rather than sitting in a savings account, our guide to the best CDT rates in Colombia covers what the banks are actually paying.