Tax pacts were signed again starting in 2017, which mainly proposed to decrease Gross Income and the Stamp Tax collected by the provinces. Additionally, the Executive Branch committed that by 2022, all taxpayers could fully compute the Tax on Bank Debits and Credits against the Income Tax. Due to the crisis the country was facing, it was established that companies must pay their first advance on the definitive tax for the following year applying a rate of 25%. The withholding of Income Tax on salaries is not new; it has always existed. The Value Added Tax remained unchanged for three decades, only the 10.50% rate was applied to bread, which was previously exempt. Some countries have a lower tax rate when consumption payments are made with debit cards. After the 2019 PASO elections, the government shifted course, establishing a tax rebate benefit for 13 basic food basket products that only applied until the end of that year. On this issue, the State has intervened for many years in the labor relationship, which should be limited to the company and the worker. In 2023, through law 27.725, an attempt was made to eliminate it by creating a specific tax for high incomes. While this was happening, the 24 articles that make up the basic food basket, except for milk, remain taxed at 21% and 10.5%. The State should return the tax to low-income consumers on their purchase card, and in this way, it would also help to formalize part of the economy that circulates in the informal sector. Now, the Executive Branch announced that it will send a new bill to Congress, which promises the elimination of taxes, leaving only those that contribute the most to tax revenue. The argument seems logical; however, some taxes, even if they contribute little money to the State's treasury, have a specific purpose regarding the destination that must be given to the funds collected. Fiscal Pact In 1994, the Nation signed it with the provinces. The PAIS tax (27.541) was not repealed, only its validity expired by law last December. The entire tax structure remains the same, nothing transforms; from time to time, changes are made to be able to collect more taxes in the short term, without complying with tax principles. Despite inflation, after thirty years, Argentina continues to be dressed in the norms of convertibility. Source: El Cronista Tax on Personal Assets Law 23.966, created in 1991, began to tax the assets of individuals, assuming that debts do not integrate them since they cannot be deducted from the calculation, as happened previously with the Net Wealth Tax. The different modifications made in the last thirty years did not touch the structure of the taxes, this occurred both at the national and provincial level. Currently, some things related to exemptions remain, but they are becoming more limited and more requirements are demanded. This excessive percentage, which was not financed, was recently modified, bringing it to nine advances of 11% for all companies. The withholding, perception, and discount schemes for bank accreditations (national and provincial) were maintained, with the only exception that different jurisdictions increased the discount rates with the legal 'artifice' of the fiscal risk categories of taxpayers. The higher the risk, the higher the discount rate on the check tax, which reaches 5%. But the current government, through law 27.743, revived it from 2024, generating complaints in the justice system, by some unions that argued that the measure produced a change in the rules of the established labor relations. Before 2004, the tax only reached managerial levels, but from that year a resolution of the Ministry of Labor 436/04 established that the maximum withholding rate of the Tax on a monthly salary could reach up to 35%, calculated on the gross remuneration. But the need for the cashbox again forced a 180-degree turn, the pacts that were signed later suspended the reductions of provincial taxes and the check tax remained unchanged. Income Tax Advance Regime It comes without modifications for more than two decades. This generates that the nominal rates of the taxes no longer serve, because the real cost is given by the effective rate that is paid for the lack of recognition of inflation. This causes there to be winners and losers, the former are those who can update their variables and the latter are those who must handle themselves in historical values. In tax matters, despite the partial and limited authorization of the inflation tax adjustment, the winner is the State and the losers are the taxpayers. This caused that in Gross Income there are impossible-to-recover balances in favor, since despite the fact that there are mechanisms to process the return, the requirements demanded make it impossible to comply. 8. Employer Contributions In the year 2001, decree 814 made it possible for companies to compute a percentage of what was paid as a social security contribution employer contribution, as a technical fiscal credit of the Value Added Tax. In the reform of the previous government this option was gradually eliminated; however, law 27.541 of late 2019 restored it, modifying the percentages of computation in each of the provinces where the workers are employed. The Fernández government made a swap, replacing the previous system with direct benefits granted in the food card in favor of low-resource sectors. 7. Tax on Bank Debits and Credits (law 25.413) It has been 25 years since its creation, the State implemented it with the argument that the bank movements of companies and people serve as indicators of economic activity and in this way it could anticipate funds to then be discounted from taxes that do have their theoretical foundation. However, over the time elapsed, it was not allowed to fully discount those advances; only, after law 27.264, Micro and Small companies could fully consider them as payments on account of the Income Tax. Editorial Zoom With Bessent it is not enough: lower rates and recovery of activity, the agenda free of risk Ariel Cohen Opinion As Ortega y Gasset already said, 'Argentines to the things' Daniel Artana Other taxes have an objective of economic policy, for example those that were created to favor certain geographical areas of the country, due to unfavorable climatic characteristics, due to distance or for geopolitical causes. If on a sheet we make a list of the taxes in force, it can be observed that most are present in the old photo taken in the nineties. In this way, the taxpayer cannot demonstrate the veracity of the operation, even despite the fact that another law (11.683) allows it. As a positive point, the elimination of some internal customs houses came out, for which more taxes were charged on interjurisdictional sales. There is still no response with what will happen with the last whitening approved. 3. In the two moments that whitening came out, the carrot to adhere was the promise of elimination or reduction of the tax for the future, thing that in the regularization regime of the year 2017 could not be fulfilled. Anti-Evasion Law This law (25.345) created in 2000, had the intention to force that the payments that the taxpayers make be banked, with the objective to help to improve the controls and to collect more of the check tax. The increase of nominal salaries and the lack of correlation of the increases of the personal deductions and of the calculation tables, produced the expansion of the base of workers that had to pay the tax. Only export tariffs were created and repealed, according to the trend of the government that assumed, without there being a permanent policy in time that helps to define the traits of the contradictory 'Argentina brand'. The statistics rate, which varied from being a proportional rate to a progressive one, was extended twice, by the previous and the current government, through decrees instead of laws. Despite all these modifications, which forced many legislative meetings and kilometers of ink spilled in the newspapers trying to explain the reasons and methodology of the changes, it never came to move the needle of tax collection. In the tax reform project of the Macri government it was proposed to eliminate it; however, it came out alive from the Congress that proposed to diminish it with the passing of the following years; but this proposal did not continue ahead since later due to the fiscal needs it was made even more expensive. The current government, through law 27.743, allowed that optionally the taxpayers can pay in advance five years together, again reducing the rates for those who remain with the obligation of payment and annual presentation and a benefit for the compliers. Throughout the years it has maintained with its invariable structure, only the exempt minimum was increasing discretely, in where there were years that they had to be paid for all the assets, without being able to discount a non-taxable minimum. The last version was with progressive rates instead of the proportional ones, that were increased for the goods located in the exterior and arriving to the extreme of duplicating it with the famous solidarity contribution of previous years. What makes it not have constitutional value. What little ceased to exist Ganancia Mínima Presunta represents a genuine change of the tax matrix devised in the nineties. This percentage is added to the 20% that the Labor Contract Law authorizes to discount for the pension issues. In this way the top total authorized discount on the gross salary passed from 30% to 55%, from the year 2004. It represents the third place inside the tax collection of the country, seeming impossible to think that it will be eliminated. 2. At a moment it was tried to do the same with the whole milk, but the project failed in the Congress. Another modification of the nineties matrix was the elimination of the Tax on the transfer of real estate (ITI), that was executed in the year 2024 by the current government, through law 27.743. The value of $ 1000 (u$s 1000 at that moment) that prevents to make the payments in cash today continues today unaltered (less than a dollar) as if nothing had happened with the inflation during all these years. This law is not innocuous, since it authorizes ARCA to impugn all the payments made that do not fulfill what is stipulated in the rule, and it does it without admitting proof in contrary. For the taxpayers it meant to accede to a right having to pay a tax, for that reason the cases of adhesion were counted. Additionally, fulfilling the literal of that law of the year 1991, the minimums and deductions of many taxes are not updated. For example, the internal taxes were created as a tool that the State possesses to discourage the consumption of certain goods, that can be harmful for the population (tobacco alcohol, etc. In 2017 a revaluation law came out that served for those who opted to update the cost values of the assets of use and of the social participations for the moment of the sale. Except for the momentary change of sense, all continues equal than before. 5. From there on, the fiscal pacts, like the last attempt celebrated in the photo of the House of Tucumán, remained only for the photos. 9. Taxes to the foreign trade remained almost intact in the last three decades. Let's see, one by one, which was the origin of each one of them: 1. The unrecognized inflation. The laws 23.928 (convertibility) and 24.073 (article 39), for that the updating of the variables of the economy is prohibited, continue in force as if at the moment there was no inflation and we were under an economic stabilization plan. It was eliminated from the year 2017 for the Pymes and from the year 2019 for the universe of the companies. Despite the existence of a ruling of the Court in favor of a taxpayer, it is of individual character. 4. The photo of the tax matrix in force was taken in the '90s. In the Congress the project of Unit of Tax Value (UTV) continues sleeping that would allow the updating of the minimums and deductions of the taxes. 10.
