How Act 60 Decrees Get Revoked: The Mistakes That Actually Do It

Decrees don't die from exotic tax controversies. They die from missed filings, botched donations, day-count shortfalls, and evidence that doesn't exist — the mundane failures behind 2025's 305 deficiency notices, 19 annulments, and 4 revocations. Here are the seven patterns, and what losing a decree actually costs.

1. Missing the annual filing

The most preventable failure now carries an automatic $1,000 fine (since 2026) and starts the escalation clock toward revocation. Repeated misses read as abandonment. The annual cycle is a calendar problem — the entire failure mode is not having the calendar.

2. Botching the donation

Right amount, wrong execution: missing the $5,000/$5,000 split between CECFL-list and Hacienda-qualified organizations, giving to a group not on the current list, wiring on December 30 and getting a January receipt, or having no receipt at all. Each variant is a deficiency finding.

3. Coming up short on days

A 183-day plan with a 171-day reality — discovered in February, when nothing can be done about last year. Presence failures usually come from optimistic mental math plus an untracked December trip. Live counts with year-end projection exist precisely to surface the problem in October (how counting works).

4. Keeping a mainland life

License never surrendered, spouse and kids stateside, the "just in case" house, mainland accounts doing the real banking. Each is a weighted fact against you in the closer connection test— and together they're the profile the IRS campaign was built to find. This mistake is the expensive one: it forfeits the federal exclusion, not just the decree.

5. Thin or reconstructed evidence

Genuinely compliant holders lose examinations for lack of proof. No utility bills kept, no donation receipts, travel history reconstructed from a photos app. Contemporaneous records are the only kind that read as credible; the fix is a capture habit, not a heroic assembly effort after the letter arrives.

6. Missing the 2-year property clock

The purchase requirement runs from decree grant— not from your move, not from "when the market improves." Post-2026 decrees add the registry-recording step (2026 changes). Holders lose track because the deadline lives two years from a date they never diarized.

7. Treating the decree as the finish line

The decree is the start of a 15-year compliance relationship — annual obligations, annual residency tests, permanent recordkeeping. Everything on this list is downstream of relaxing after the grant.

What losing a decree actually costs

Revocation ends the 0%/4% treatment — and reopens the past: Puerto Rico exposure on previously covered income, and if residency itself fails, federalback taxes, interest, and penalties on income you'd excluded under §933. Against that, the compliance burden — a calendar, a donation done right, a day count, and a file that stays current — is trivially cheap.