10/05/2020 - 6:01
Clarín.com
Economy
The tax burden, the impact that taxes have on the gross product, grew this year and will go up one notch again next year.
"In general terms, the projections contained in the 2021 budget mark
a return to the path of growth of the fiscal pressure in Argentina
", indicates an IARAF report.
In this way, 2021 will be the
third consecutive year
with the tax pressure on the rise, after the fall that had been registered between 2016 and 2018, when the floor of 23.2% of GDP was reached.
The IARAF projection indicates that next year it would reach 24.8%, after 23.8% in 2020.
The collapse of the economy with the appearance of new taxes, such as the PAIS tax that recharges the purchase of dollars with 30%, combine so that
the weight of taxes grows.
According to the IARAF projection, for this year the total collection is expected to exceed by 0.4 percentage points of GDP compared to 2019. With this, the effective global tax pressure
would go from 23.4% in 2019 to 23.8 % of GDP in 2020
.
This occurs due to the effect of the recession and the pandemic: while total taxes would fall in real terms by 9.2% according to the estimate of the 2021 Budget project, the aggregate activity of the economy would fall by 12.1% in real terms.
"What this reflects is that, although the size of the economic activity pie would shrink, the government would be left with a larger portion via taxes than it did last year," the IARAF stated.
How will taxes evolve this year?
Social security taxes would maintain a real drop of 8.4%, which, being less than the fall in the economy, would cause a slight increase in their share of GDP, from 5.5% in 2019 to 5.6% in 2020.
Taxes linked to foreign trade would lose 0.5 percentage points of participation in the product, going from 2.6% in 2019 to 2.1% in 2020.
The taxes that fall more directly on internal activity that did not undergo relevant changes in 2020 (VAT, Earnings, Monotax and Fuels, among the main ones) would yield 0.3 points of GDP, basically as a result of real losses due to VAT and Earnings,
higher to the fall of the economy.
The collection of the PAIS and Personal Property tax would add up to 1.1 points of GDP.
"The growth in these direct taxes would more than compensate for the drop in taxes on foreign trade and taxes on domestic activity," says IARAF.
For 2021, the Budget project expects an expansion of the activity of 5.5%, while the total collection would increase by 9.9%.
This would bring the effective pressure of national taxes to
24.8% of GDP
, which is 1 point higher than that of 2020 and 1.4 points above that of 2019. "This time, real collection would grow more than real recovery of the activity. It would
increase the size of the cake
,
but at the same time it would increase more the portion that takes the taxes
".
It is projected that Social Security resources will practically maintain their weight in GDP compared to 2020, and that those related to foreign trade will recover half of their fall.
Next year, taxes related to internal activity would increase as a whole by 0.5 points.
"The main boost would come from VAT, for which a strong recovery is projected, reflected in an expected growth of 12.1% in real terms that would lead to a 0.4 point GDP growth compared to 2020."
Finally, for the PAIS tax, a rise in its participation in the product is also estimated, resulting in 0.2 points above 2020, which
would add more than 0.9 points to the collection
compared to 2019, when not the tax existed.
In any case, the IARAF warns that "the projections for an increase in collection in 2021 look optimistic for some items."
AQ
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