Starting in 2022, the RFC tax number becomes an indispensable attribute of every adult citizen and resident of Mexico. Same as CURP. Changes in tax legislation make it mandatory to obtain it. If you don't have an RFC, it's okay, but you won't be able to open a bank account, register telecommunications and utilities in your name, or sell real estate or a car. You may not even know what an RFC is until you encounter one of these situations.
If you are over 18 years old, but have no income or any business activity, you are not required to immediately issue an RFC. But as soon as you started doing business, even if you opened an account in a bank or other financial organization, took part in a legal entity, sold a car, etc., from that moment on, within a month you should apply for registration with the tax office and receive an RFC. Failure to comply with this standard may result in fines — from 4,480 to 13,430 pesos (2025).
If you have an RFC number that was once generated by the bank when opening an account for you, but do not have an electronic key, consider that you do not have an RFC number either. Sooner or later, the bank will ask you to activate your RFC number, since the tax office will refuse to accept it.
Why RFC is needed and how it is used for tax purposes, we have described in other publications. In this article, we will show you how to purchase a Mexican RFC tax number yourself.
As a foreign citizen, a Mexican resident can only obtain an RFC by visiting a SAT office in person. The list of required papers is minimal. There is nothing complicated in the procedure itself, but there are huge queues that have accompanied the application process since the beginning of 2022.
«Sita» (cita) — this is a visiting appointment. To visit the SAT office, you first need to purchase a strainer.
You can find the coordinates of all offices of the SAT Tax Planning Service in MexicoHere.
Permanent residents of Mexico aged 60 years and older can go to the SAT office without an appointment. To do this, they need to come from 8:00 to 8:30 to the selected office, bringing with them the package of documentation indicated below. They will be accepted first.
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If you select a virtual queue, the system will send a confirmation code (7 characters) to your email, which you need to copy from your email and enter into the field on the website. Confirm this code by clicking Reenviar and the system will add you to the virtual queue. A notification with short instructions will be sent to your email. The instructions are simple: wait for the letter with the first available date and confirm the date. If the date does not suit you, you can decline the offer and continue to wait for the next email with an available date.
You can check your queue by going to the same site and clicking Consultar cita.
From experience, you will have to wait a very long time, in some states up to 4 months. You can speed up the process by purchasing a queue in the SAT. We will not advise you to do this, if only because there are a lot of fake offers for help in getting SAT scores. In addition, SAT does not allow you to purchase an RFC instead of someone else or by proxy, and you will still have to go to the tax office in person.
When the date of your visit to the SAT office is near, prepare the following documents:
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Essential:proof of home address (receipt) — one of the key papers.
I. Formally, you have the right to contact any SAT office in Mexican territory, without reference to your residential address (in other words, you are allowed to come to the office in Mexico City with receipts for utility services in Cancun). But in fact, many SAT offices will refuse if you indicate your home address in another municipality. We still strongly advise having proof of home address from the same municipality where the SAT office is located.
II. They may start asking you what your house looks like, is it a house or apartment, what streets is it next to, what is located nearby. These are not idle questions. You register an official tax address and the SAT officer wants to verify that you actually live there. In some cases, it can even open Google Maps and check.
Don't show up to the SAT office too early, but be aware that there may still be a line of people just like you at the entrance. It is not a fact that you will arrive at the appointed time. First, at the entrance, your papers will be checked to see if you have enough, then you will be asked to write down your name, and then you will be called when a free window appears. You can wait outside the office for an hour or more. Upon entering the building, you must issue a number if there is an electronic queue inside the office, — according to him you will be called.
If you want to come to your appointment with an interpreter, most likely the interpreter will not be allowed. SAT believes that the design of the RFC — It’s too simple an operation to require someone else’s assistance, and you’ve already provided all the necessary data.
According to regulations, the entire process of issuing an RFC at the SAT office lasts no more than 40 minutes. During it, you will be fingerprinted, in some offices you will be photographed, and at the end you will be given an official two-page document with your RFC number, other information about you as a taxpayer (the fiscal address is especially important) and a QR code. Electronic keys will be written to the flash drive. In the future, you will also be able to download a file with your RFC from the tax service website at any time.
The result of visiting the SAT office will be the receipt of the following documents and files:
- confirmation of registration in RFC and receipt of a tax number,
- notification about the generation of an electronic signature,
- confirmation of receipt of electronic signature files,
- on USB stick:
- a file with the extension .key, which cannot be obtained except by visiting the SAT office again,
- a file with the .cer extension, which can be restored over the Internet,
- a file with the extension .txt with the private key password.key.
Don't want to deal with obtaining RFCs yourself? Entrust this task to us!More details
The next step you will need to take after purchasing RFC — obtain a certificate of tax regime (Constancia de Situacion Fiscal). We will talk about this in other publications.