With the support of the Government and a request for collaboration from the United States made by Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the bloc of national senators from the Front for All presented this Monday a bill that proposes creating a “National Fund for the cancellation of the debt with the IMF” with “a special emergency contribution” from those people who have assets abroad “that were escaped and have not been declared before the treasury”.
The initiative was presented after the Government signed the agreement with the multilateral credit organization to modify the repayment terms of the credit of more than 44 billion dollars acquired during the government of former President Mauricio Macri, which received parliamentary endorsement and recent ratification by the IMF.
According to the document released this Monday, the contribution “will not represent a new tax burden for most Argentines, since it will only be up to those who have assets abroad and are evading taxes or laundering money.”
Those reached by this initiative must make a contribution of 20% of their undeclared assetsportion that must be paid in dollars.
Almost simultaneously with the presentation of the project, the head of the Senate received the United States ambassador to Argentina, Mark Stanley, in her congressional office.
“I received Marc R. Stanley, ambassador of the United States, in the Senate. We talked about different topics of common interest: money laundering, human trafficking and human rights”, The former president reported on her Twitter account.
“Furthermore,” he added, “I requested your country’s collaboration with the bill presented today by the
senators of the Front of All to create a National Fund for the cancellation of the debt with the IMF, with resources recovered abroad from money laundering and evasion”.
The National Government appreciates the initiative of the Bloc of Senators of the @FrontOfAll that promotes the creation of a special emergency contribution for those who have undeclared assets abroad.
– Gabriela Cerruti (@gabicerru) March 28, 2022
In turn, the spokesperson for the Presidency, Gabriela Cerruti highlighted on his Twitter account that “the national government values the initiative of the Bloc of Senators of the Front for All, which promotes the creation of a special emergency contribution for those who have undeclared assets abroad.”
“This Fund, based on a strict sense of distributive justice, will contribute to the cancellation of the debt with the IMF taken by Mauricio Macri,” added the spokeswoman.
As indicated in the senators’ project, it is estimated that there are almost 420 billion dollars of Argentines “abroad and/or outside the institutionalized financial system of our country”, of which approximately only one sixth is declared.
The project indicates that “in the case of declaring the assets after six months of the entry into force of the law, the rate will rise to 35%”, and adds that those who do not comply with the payment of this contribution “run the risk of have a prison sentence,” as stipulated by current law.
The norm will also reach those who have made a change of fiscal residence to another country, “when the true vital center of interests continues to be the Argentine Republic.”
The pro-government senators also propose using the figure of the “collaborator”, which will be applied to those who facilitate the discovery of undeclared assets.
Both natural persons and banking entities may collaborate, and they will be released from any confidentiality agreement with the evader.
Those who help to this end will be rewarded with up to 30% of what is obtained for the information provided.
In that sense, to put this figure into effect, it was reported that “Another initiative will be presented that modifies the exceptions to banking, stock market and fiscal secrecy”, which would allow the prosecutors in charge of the investigation of the case not to have to wait for the authorization of a judge to access that information.
Through their recitals, the official legislators assure that “as of December 31, 2021, according to official statistics, there are 417,507 million dollars of Argentines abroad and/or outside the institutionalized financial system of our country” and affirm that ” Of these, only 69,000 million dollars have been declared before the AFIP”.
“Those who benefited from the IMF’s resources, leaked foreign currency from Argentina and did not declare it – an act that is deeply damaging to our Nation’s taxpayers – are the ones who must make the greatest tax effort and to whom this bill ultimately aims to amortize the debt with the IMF. It is an act of strict distributive, tax and historical justice”, underlines the statement.
