The creation of the regime is partly motivated by the tax information exchange agreement signed with the United States, which came into force in 2023. As of September 2024, AFIP will receive the first batch of information.
While these tax amnesties may seem unfair to compliant taxpayers, they are a common tool in many countries following the signing of tax information exchange agreements.
The main attraction of this new tax system is its low tax cost, with an initial rate of 5% in its first stage. In addition, it offers the possibility of regularizing assets at no cost, provided that the total value of the assets does not exceed 100 thousand dollars or that the funds are banked and kept in a special account until December 31, 2025.
This is a general tax exemption that covers all types of assets with economic value, both in Argentina and abroad, provided that they are owned by the taxpayer as of December 31, 2023.
The special tax on money laundering will be determined according to the stage of accession, in accordance with the following schedule:
Exceptionally, the tax will be calculated and paid in dollars, and all assets must be valued in that currency, with some exceptions. The valuation of the assets, in general, will be their market value and the AFIP will establish the mechanisms to prove the value of the assets and the ownership as of December 31, 2023.
The system provides for a 75% advance payment of the excise tax within the deadlines for declaring adherence. The taxpayer will then have two months to file the sworn declaration and pay the remaining 25% balance.
How to enter the free whitening?
- Declare assets with a total value less than or equal to 100 thousand dollars.
- Deposit or transfer the cash to special regularization accounts, keeping it until December 31, 2025.
- Transfer money deposited in foreign accounts to special regularization accounts, keeping it until December 31, 2025.
- Acquire participation certificates or debt securities from productive investment trusts or mutual funds with the regularized funds, maintaining ownership until December 31, 2025.
- Use the regularized funds to pay the money laundering tax.
Entry into the regime offers many benefits such as the release from all claims in civil matters and for tax, exchange, customs and administrative crimes. It also includes the release from the payment of income tax, personal property, solidarity contribution, VAT, among others, both for regularized assets and for those included in the DDJJ until the period 2023.
Additionally, it grants the benefit of tax blocking for those assets that had been owned and that are no longer in the assets as of December 31, 2023, as well as the release of taxes for the amounts consumed until the year 2023. However, the detection by the AFIP of undeclared assets for a value greater than 10% of the regularized assets will cause the loss of the tax stopper benefit, except for the regularized assets.
Adherence to the regime also allows access to the special mechanism for unified payment of personal property. for the periods 2024 to 2027, with a reduced rate of 0.5% on the value of the regularized assets, multiplied by 4 (four).
Besides, will have fiscal stability until 2038which means that they will not be able to claim estate taxes above 0.5% of the value of the estate from 2024 to 2027, and 0.25% from 2028 to 2038. This represents a significant opportunity to set a limit on the payment of estate taxes on laundered assets.
It is important to note that taxpayers who do not have assets to declare under this regime will not be able to access the tax block, a notable difference with the 2016 money laundering regime, which did allow it.
This new tax relief provides an opportunity to regularise the tax situation and take advantage of its enormous benefits, in a context of greater transparency and exchange of information at an international level.
Tax Manager at La Vista Casal.
Source: Ambito
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