Argentina: We Are Innovation Analyzes AFIP’s Ruling on Crypto Assets
* Tax lawyer Marianela Mendoza made an exhaustive and critical report on the measure of the tax collection agency.
* We Are Innovation and the Argentine Taxpayers’ Council qualify the tax as “unconstitutional.”
Córdoba, Argentina (September 07, 2022) — Dr. Marianela Mendoza, Tax Law Attorney and Associate Researcher at Fundación Internacional Bases, produced an exhaustive report on AFIP’s Internal Ruling No. 2/2022, by which the revenue agency defines crypto assets as financial assets. According to the report, it “mistakenly assimilates them to ‘Negotiable Securities,’ to reach them with the Personal Property Tax (ISBP).”
Dr. Mendoza explained that “the AFIP’s ruling collides with principles derived from the Constitutional-Tax Law, such as the Principle of Legality and the Principle of Legal Certainty.” According to the tax expert, “this resolution also affects the Property Right and goes against the derived Principle of Non-Confiscation, since the holding of negotiable securities and the transactions carried out with such securities are subject to the Income Tax of the second category, the reason for which not only a double taxation -which Law also prohibits- could occur, but also increases the fiscal pressure on the burdened Argentine taxpayers.”
For his part, José Cambareri, Executive Director of the Argentine Taxpayers’ Council, expressed that “many countries have decided to favor operations with cryptocurrencies. Countries such as Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, Switzerland, Croatia, Portugal, Malaysia, and Singapore. Argentina, unfortunately, is not among them. As our report shows, it is again trying to add a new layer of taxation.”
According to the report, shortly, taxpayers holding crypto assets will raise the unconstitutionality of the rule. “Lower Courts are increasingly taking into account tax pressure to determine whether or not a tax rule is an advance on private property and therefore confiscatory. In this way, when a rule is ruled as ‘unconstitutional,’ the collection agency will not be able to collect the tax,” concluded Marianela Mendoza, author of the report.
The We Are Innovation Network, which has more than 30 NGOs and think tanks and is present throughout LatAm, the United States, and Europe, announced that they will continue to monitor the situation and promote innovation in cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
For more information, visit www.weareinnovation.eu
ENDS
ABOUT WE ARE INNOVATION
We Are Innovation is a network formed by a group of individuals and institutions that believe innovative solutions are how people get involved in solving problems. With more than 30 think tanks and NGOs based in Europe and Latin America, We Are Innovation is the voice of a vibrant civil society that wants to progress through innovation, the adoption of new technologies and human creativity. Visit https://weareinnovation.global/ to learn more.
