The Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, will insist on 2026 with the idea that the public uses their dollars saved in the mattress to consume and to this will include the concept of presumption of fiscal innocence through budget 2026.
According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), to the first quarter of 2025 Argentines dollars outside the system reached US $243,000 million.
This is the International investment position (PII)which measures the amount of currency of Argentines invested outside the local banking system, except the dollars of foreigners invested in accounts in the country.
The dollars to which aimA Caputo are in the “other sectors” category, whose net value was $ S161.515 million. The total assets was US $401,778 million, of which US $242,972 million corresponds to “currencies and deposits”. That is the goal, that a part of them returns at least.
The liabilities in total were for US $240,263 million. That means that there are so much money from Argentines outside the system or in exterior accounts as money from foreigners invested in the country. The difference is that most of the foreigners’ money is direct investment (U $ S177,000 million) and loans. They have no money “saved” in Argentina.
The number of assets of Argentines outside the local financial system is what surprised the head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva. If that money entered the local circuit, I reasoned, it could solve many problems of the economy.
The “laundering” by decree
Last year, the government sanctioned the Decree 353/2025 and General Resolution 5704/2025 of ARCA that created a simplified earnings regime. The regime allows to declare income only due to income from the Argentine source and not require justification of origin for assets acquired with these funds in three years behind.
Simplified gains is a system in which ARCA offers the taxpayer the settlement of his tax And this endorses it or not. It is a system similar to the monotax, where monetary authority basically takes into account billing. The person could, in theory, Remove dollars from their security box, spend them and prevent Arca from asking where he got that money.
Sebastián Domínguez, CEO of SDC Tax Advisors, He explained to the scope that although simplified profits is sanctioned by law, which enshrines the principle of presumption of fiscal innocence, It does not generate an absolute credibility environment.
“That measure alone is that the person does not have to give information to Arca ”, Dominguez said, who clarified that “It does not prevent Arca from investigating” Heritage under the concept of “presumption of innocence.”
An element to keep in mind is that currently the regime in force by decree has an instruction so that the tax authority does not investigate patrimonial movements 3 years back, when the procedure law indicates that debts expire at 5 years.
Dollar remainization
Beyond that, the same problem that face the economies considered bimonnear. Is that people decide to save on hard currencies and They use the local currency to transaction. When Caputo last year he introduced this point on the agenda It supposed that people could use dollars and start a remoteization process of the economy if they were given an environment of adequate legal stability and certainty, combined with a strongly restrictive monetary policy, and the possibility of businesses to invoice and collect in dollars.
In an environment in which there are no pesos, A person could buy a car with dollars directly. The idea was move the economy without having money. Assuming that the public would take 10% of the total out of the mattress, if businesses could not bill in dollars, people would have to redeem them for pesos. The BCRA would have to emit about $ 35 billion at current values.
Instead of getting dollars from the mattress, the opposite happened
The economist Hernán Letcher, from the Argentine Political Economy Center (CEPA), He pointed out that on the contrary, instead of moving dollars from the mattress, they left. “It was the other way around, the people went and bought,” explained.
“He Budget 2026 has the problem that says the exchange rate will decrease And then it will be maintained, with the aggravating fact that today the balance of exports less imports is negative. Where are the dollars to come out? ”He said.
Letcher indicated that “in The economic team thought it was going to work for them ” The exchange scheme this year. “They believed there was going to be a 10% devaluation in the second semester,” he said when analyzing the budget numbers. His opinion is that the scenario changed completely, but to present the bill they did not update the economic assumptions.
Source: Ambito
