Argentina has the highest informality rate in the world, but at the same time, it is the most burdensome country, warned Matías Olivero Vila, president of Lógica, the entity that has been promoting the differentiation of provincial, municipal, and national taxes on invoices. Olivero Vila also questioned the 'Law of Fiscal Innocence,' which created the 'Simplified Regime,' an 'unprecedented continuous amnesty.' He explained that another cause is the 'most institutionalized one': in this century, every 2 years and 8 months, a national amnesty, moratorium, or facility plan for fiscal regularization has been enacted with substantial discounts.' To this, he added, are the provincial regimes. He lamented the existence of a 'legalized informality,' worsened by competing in an unusual way in hyper-competitive (supermarkets) and hyper-regulated (insurance and banking) markets. 'And taxes can continue to fall in a virtuous circle,' he noted. The substantial tax reform can be done in two ways. He said that first, 'in stages, without compromising the fiscal surplus, the path followed so far at the national level. Second, suddenly, drastically lowering main taxes and eliminating distorting ones that few or no countries have, as Paraguay and Ireland did; and also about twenty countries, especially from Eastern Europe, that successfully apply the 'Flat Tax,' a regime of very few and very low taxes proposed for years by renowned economists, international entities, and here by the Fundación Bases.' He said there are secondary ways to attack informality, through incentives for consumers to demand receipts, either with percentages of expenses applicable to tax payment (chosen in Brazil to attack its high informality), or with deductions in income for expenses not currently allowed, an option that was reported to be included in the fiscal chapters of the Labor Reform but has been discarded for now. Conclusions: 1) The loss of competitiveness of companies due to the highest taxes, with citizens bearing more than 40% and even more than 50% in taxes when consuming, is one side of the coin of the most burdensome country; the other side is that half the country operates in the informal sector; a regime as heavy as it is unjust and hypocritical; 2) The current high informality must be reduced by substantially lowering taxes; and, complementarily, with incentives for consumers, strongly reducing hyper-regulation, properly supervising, raising awareness in society, and annihilating all kinds of amnesties and 'irregular arrangements'; and 3) In any tax reform, lowering taxes is as important as attacking and reducing informality; achieving a regime where logical taxes are paid by (almost) everyone is of maximum importance for Argentina today, similar to having a surplus. 'When faced with fiscal objections, the system usually offers taxpayers the chance to 'fix' them in more or less irregular ways,' lamented. 'What are the consequences of this informality? Being Argentina the most burdensome country fiscally, these remedies arise as necessary evils; but they are a shot to the waterline of fiscal compliance, so they must be annihilated when a logical tax regime is achieved.'
