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>Nope, although the fake currency transfer rates that are the big obstacle here are structurally similar in their economic impact to prohibitively-high export tariffs, they aren't actually taxes; they don't go to the Treasury but to the Central Bank, and so they don't pay for social services but rather to subsidize imports, further hollowing out the Argentine economy and destroying our competitiveness. But the evidence suggests that, even if I'm willing to take the 38% haircut, TransferWise and PayPal simply don't work. They just don't have service here. As I said on my previous post, you are circumventing local laws and taxes while living in Argentina by using Bitcoin. TransferWise and Paypal may not work in Argentina (I'm pretty sure TW works but just doesn't offer you a favorable exchange rate), but you could still receive a normal bank transaction from abroad and sell your dollars cheaper as stipulated by the laws in the country you choose to live in. >Argentina does have a little bit of income tax, which I'm not allowed to pay (I tried, but the tax office turned me away because they don't accept income taxes from illegal immigrants), but most of the tax revenue here comes from the VAT, which I pay just like everyone else, because it's included in the price of everything. Exports of information technology services, which is what I do, are exempt from VAT. In fact, when I had a company here, before I was an illegal immigrant, I had to pay a lot of extra VAT that was supposed to get refunded, but it never was, because following that aspect of the law is too inconvenient to the government. (Because all my revenue came from exports, you see.) One accountant suggested that I bill a friend's domestic company for fake services in order to get the refund. I refused. Not true. Illegal immigrants can be registered as autonomous workers, and since you earn in dollars you probably would fall in the 'Responsable Inscripto' category and have to pay autonomous worker fees + 35% of what you earn. You are just choosing not to. Also, the VAT is not the lion's share of tax collection in Argentina, but income taxes. >I understand that if you've lived in a country all your life with a more or less reasonable government, all of this sounds ridiculously implausible. I'm Argentinian. I simply chose to migrate away to a country without stupid taxes or laws rather than having an unfair advantage over my countrymen by avoiding them abusing the low-attachment-to-where-I-work-from nature of my career. The local tech scene in Argentina is filled with guys like you who avoid as many taxes as they can (except VAT, of course) using crypto or offshore accounts and then goad on the internet about it. You are lucky tax evasion is not a jail-able offence in Argentina, probably because the corrupt politicians are cut from the same cloth. Sorry if I come across as too harsh on my opinion on tax evasion. I think it's an understandable crime in Argentina, but it somehow rubs me the wrong way when people openly discuss it like this on the internet. |
I can't receive a normal bank transaction without a bank account, and my experiences trying to open an Argentine bank account have been very disappointing, though admittedly I haven't tried in many years. https://pirlutravel.com/transferwise/ claims TransferWise no longer works in Argentina, since January 02020; I haven't tried it myself.
At present there are no local laws or taxes specifically on Bitcoin, so I'm not actually breaking them by receiving Bitcoin (though I am breaking laws by working for a living), but a charitable reading of your comment is that Bitcoin, like Western Union, is a loophole in the laws. And I think that's plausible.
> Not true. Illegal immigrants can be registered as autonomous workers
That's good news! But it contradicts what the clerk at AFIP told me last time I tried to get a CUIT; they told me I needed to regularize my immigration status first. Maybe the policy has changed since then. (Or maybe the clerk made a mistake—but mistakes made by clerks at AFIP still amount to law enforcement decisions.)
> Also, the VAT is not the lion's share of tax collection in Argentina, but income taxes.
So, it turns out that this is sort of false, but also sort of true, in a way I hadn't appreciated. https://www.cronista.com/economia-politica/Presupuesto-2021-... says the estimate for 02021 is that the IVA (VAT) is 28.9% of the federal budget, while the impuesto en ganancias (including both corporate income taxes and personal income tax) is 20.1%. It also has monotributo impositivo (the "autonomous worker fees" you mention) at 0.39%. So personal income tax stricto sensu is much smaller than the VAT.
(The vast majority of Argentine workers don't make enough to be subject to the income tax; with the recent legal reforms, as I understand it, the threshold has been raised to $150000 per month, excluding 90% of the workers in Argentina. Historically I would sometimes have made that much money, but it's been a long time.)
However, social-security contributions are 22.8% of the federal budget; in theory those contributions are not really "income taxes" in the sense that instead they fund your retirement, and when I had set up an Argentine company, we didn't have to pay them—we paid into a private retirement fund instead. But that legal option no longer exists, and unlike a private retirement fund, the government is not prudently investing those contributions in carefully managed investments that will ensure its solvency when I retire; it's just spending them. So in fact those contributions are income tax in all but name. And maybe that's what you meant. If you add social-security contributions together with the actual legal personal income tax, the sum is as big as IVA, or maybe even a little bigger.
If we're getting into real taxation versus de jure taxation, though, most of the government's budget comes from printing money, which in real terms is a tax on anyone holding pesos.
> I'm Argentinian. I simply chose to migrate away to a country without stupid taxes or laws rather than having an unfair advantage over my countrymen
I came here to help develop Argentina's economy with my skills and understand the reality of the world system. I have contributed to Argentina's human capital by teaching people my skills, by collaborating on projects, by giving talks, and most importantly through one-on-one mentorship; by exporting my services, I bring money into Argentina which is then ultimately used to pay down Argentina's foreign debt and for importation of urgently-needed goods and services. It's deeply unfortunate that Argentina's government puts obstacles in my way at every turn, but so far that hasn't stopped me, just injured me, and given me a much deeper understanding of the origins of poverty. But I am confident that every Argentine is better off, if only infinitesimally, because I am here—even if the government won't let me directly pay into the retirement fund como corresponde.
Even though I am living in poverty without access to adequate health care or banking and cannot visit my family, there are always people who will criticize me for having "unfair advantages" because they think I ought to be living in even worse straits. (It's a little unusual when the person criticizing me for those material advantages is in a much better material situation than I am, as in this case.) But I don't think worsening my situation is actually the way to improve the situation. Instead we should build civil society, human capital, and institutional infrastructure that are capable of lifting us out of the poverty trap our history has put us in.
You have probably made the best choice from a selfish perspective in leaving, but from the point of view of the Argentine project, I wish you were also here helping us out, because it's really hard to develop an intellectual community that can nurture nascent programmers when the best and brightest constantly move abroad. But who knows—even if you aren't teaching people in Argentina to program, maybe you're bringing more money into the country (via family remittances) than I am? (One of the Argentines I mentored is doing so.)
If so, what money transfer service do you use?