The Juntos por el Cambio (JXC) interblock in the Buenos Aires Legislature failed to approve the elimination of the tax on credit cards sought by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and which was described as a “farce” and “deceit” by the opposition as a result of a last-minute change that subjected the measure to compliance with the Ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice that raised the co-participation funds for the district.
The impossibility of reaching sufficient seats occurred during the extraordinary session called by the Buenos Aires ruling party to annul the tax on purchases with credit cards, which was created by the local management in 2020 to compensate for the drop in the percentage of co-participation which was established by the national government in 2020.
Strictly speaking, the law drafted by the Executive provided for the repeal of the tax from December 22 after the ruling of the highest court that increased to 2.95 the coefficient that the City receives for co-participating funds in response to the demand of the Buenos Aires Government that In his statement, he asked for the 3.5 set during the Presidency of Mauricio Macri.
However, Rodríguez Larreta’s proposal sent to the Legislature was modified from JxC in the hours prior to the extraordinary session with the purpose of conditioning the elimination of the tribute to the fact that the City of Buenos Aires receives the coefficient determined by the Court.
The changes were defined by the Executive during a meeting between Rodríguez Larreta and officials from the Treasury area after the national government’s statement that described the ruling as “impossible to comply with”. and clarify that it implies ceding to the City of Buenos Aires “more than 180,000 million additional pesos to those it already receives.”
With the new text The blocks of the Frente de Todos (FdT) and the Left -which make up the opposition arch- changed their previous position of supporting the law and decided not to support the authorization of the project, considered as a “table” since it had not had a previous debate in commission , but it was turned directly to the session room.
“The ruling party intended to add a clause to the project that suspended the elimination of the tax. If the intention was to modify the original project so that it says exactly the opposite, we do not validate this deception of the Buenos Aires people. We do not validate this scam,” they indicated from the FdT in a statement.
In statements to Télam, the FdT legislator Claudia Neira explained that JxC tried to “add a clause in which it was said that the elimination was temporary and was going to be suspended”, a situation that “we could not admit because it was a deception to the Buenos Aires “.
“Larreta hurried to send a project in which there were no details on what they were going to spend the additional 180,000 million pesos on, as well as an adaptation of a budget that was going to have a huge impact,” he remarked.
For the FdT legislator Javier Andrade, it was “a shame what they did” from the ruling party “to add a clause so that the tax reduction is suspended” and considered that “it was a crude setup to obtain the electoral marketing headline they needed to close the year.
Deputy Alejandrina Barry, from the FIT Unit-PTS, said that the space she represents accompanies “any plan to lower the tax on cards that is not conditional” and, in this sense, she maintained that “what the ruling party proposed is extortion and an electoral show”.
From Libertad Avanza, Ramiro Marra was upset because “now we are going to discuss this again in March, but in the meantime the taxpayers are going to have to continue paying the tax” and added that “the intention of Together for Change was never the to lower taxes, but to extort the national government to return the co-participation”.
The president of the pro-government bloc Vamos Juntos, which is a member of JxC, Diego García Vilas, considered that the proposal under debate was framed in “keeping our word to lower taxes.”
“However, we find ourselves with an opposition that is not willing to enable the discussion and with a President who publicly stated that he is going to fail to comply with the Supreme Court ruling regarding the co-participation resources,” he added.
In a statement released after the session, the block of legislators from the FdT affirmed that “Larreta lies and deceives the public once again.”
“The ruling party intended to add a clause to the project that suspended the elimination of the tax. If the intention was to modify the original project so that it says exactly the opposite, we do not validate that deception of the Buenos Aires people. We do not validate that scam”Statement from the Front of All
“Today the Buenos Aires ruling party carried out a shameful session in the Legislature with the sole purpose of installing a campaign lie and holding our bloc responsible for the impossibility of lowering taxes,” the text said.
In this sense, he stated that “this is absolutely false: from the block of legislators and legislators of the FdT we always accompany the reduction of taxes that have the objective of alleviating the pocket of the Buenos Aires people.”
“We have presented innumerable projects in this sense that never reached the venue due to the political decision of the ruling party,” said the FdT bloc and maintained that “today they were not planning to vote on the repeal of the stamp tax on credit cards either, since they added a clause in the same text that suspended its application”.
In this context, he expressed his repudiation of the “electoral action that the Head of Government Horacio Rodríguez Larreta is carrying out in relation to co-participation” and affirmed that “the Macrista slogan of defending institutions and democracy has no correlation with its Actions”.
“In this sense, we are going to continue insisting on the repeal of the stamp tax on credit cards” assured the FdT deputies in the statement and warned that “we are going to continue raising the need to move forward with the request for impeachment against Juan Bautista Mahiques and Marcelo D’Alessandro to be tried and removed from their posts after the trip to Lago Escondido: with Lawfare there is no possible democracy”.
