value of their net worth at the end of their fiscal period, as an Operation Notice tax. A tax that for entrepreneurs in the Colon Free Zone due to the current situation is the cause of the closure of multiple companies this year 2016. History In 1917, three years after the opening of the Panama Canal, the possibility of building a free zone in the area in Colón was discussed. The Colon Chamber of Commerce raised the project of a free zone in 1929, and the project was taken into account in 1948, following the Second World War. During the war, many Panamanian landowners rented land for the construction of defense centers and centers to provide services for the movement of US troops. With the end of the arrival of the troops, difficulties began. In order to alleviate these difficulties, Enrique A. Jiménez, president in 1945, had the initiative to make the free zone project a reality, using for this purpose the geographical position of the ports and the interoceanic waterway, a crucial step in navigation. Jimenéz recommended the reconsideration of the project prepared by George E. Roberts, vice president of the First National City Bank of New York, which contemplated the creation of the Colon Free Zone and had been presented to the government in 1929. In 1946, the Panamanian government hired the American Thomas E. Lyons, an official of the United States Department of Commerce and recognized authority in the design of free zones, to carry out a feasibility study in the area suggested by the project. Based on its recommendations, the government gave its approval two years later, in June 1948, to creating an autonomous entity of 36 hectares where the trade of products was exempt from tariffs and had little paperwork. The Colon Free Zone will have its own legal status only dependent on the Presidency of the Republic and the Comptroller General of Panama. Lyons conceived the free zone as a strategic center that would connect the industries of the United States and Europe with the clients of Latin America, concentrating in the same geographic point mainly warehouses but also supplier industries, which in turn would bring collateral benefits to Panama in the area of construction, land prices, transfer of managerial knowledge, stimulation of business tourism, industrialization of Panama, increased revenues from the Panama Canal and increased air traffic. Lyons' projections were met and hundreds