New Law 78-2025: Prescription Medications Exempt from Inventory Tax in Puerto Rico

Act 78-2025, recently enacted by the Legislative Assembly, exempts prescription medications from the inventory tax, a measure designed to increase availability and reduce healthcare costs for patients.

🎯 What Is the Purpose of This Law?

The Statement of Motives behind the law highlights a key public policy priority: ensuring that prescription medications, which are vital for patients’ health, remain affordable and accessible. These medications are already exempt from the Sales and Use Tax (SUT or IVU), and now, for the same policy reasons, they will also be exempt from municipal property taxes on inventory.

Until now, pharmacies were required to pay a tax on their inventory, including prescription drugs. However, they couldn’t pass that cost onto the patient and had to absorb it from their profit margins. This disproportionately affected community pharmacies, where up to 90% of sales come from prescription medications, compared to only 10% from over-the-counter items and retail products.

💊 What Changes with Law 78-2025?

The new law amends Article 7.092 of the Puerto Rico Municipal Code (Law 107-2020) to add prescription medications to the list of exempt personal property for municipal tax purposes. In short, this means that pharmacies no longer need to pay inventory tax on prescription drugs.

🗓 When Does It Take Effect?

The law is effective immediately upon approval, so pharmacies across the island can begin to benefit from this exemption now.

This blog post was created with the assistance of AI tools and is intended for informational purposes only.