The Senate planned to pass an exemption for guards into law, but made a key change that sent the bill back to Deputies. What is it about?
By Pablo Sieira
13/04/2023 – 20,15hs
He Income Tax has been having more and more frequent modifications due to the drop in the purchasing power of workers and, in this context, the Senate approved a relief project about this tribute for the health workers that focuses on mandatory guard duty, but instead of signing it into law returned it with an important change to the Chamber of Deputies.
The project had been approved by the Chamber of Deputies since November 2022 and established a modification in Law 20,628 on Income Tax to exempt from payment of that tax to the remuneration received by doctors, assistants and health technicians for mandatory guard dutywhen they exceed the number of 4 guards of 24 hours a month.
Unanimously with 53 votes, The senators decided to modify it so that the exemption covers all on-call and overtime, without limit, carried out by workers in public or private health centers throughout the country.
the change goes in line with the agreement reached days ago by the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, with the CGT to exempt the collection of travel expenses, bonuses for productivity, additional, overtime and other items to workers from various sectors such as education, industry and also health.
Health Earnings Exemption: what does the bill say and what was the key change?
After a 5-month paralysis that ended with an agreement between the Frente de Todos and Juntos por el Cambio to move forward with an agenda of agreed issues, the Senate planned to sanction the law this Thursday but in the same spirit of agreement, they decided to make a modification that delays approval because it forces the project to return to the Chamber of origin for its second review.
Promoted by the ruling party, the project seeks prevent workers in this sector from going up to a higher tax category by seeing their salary increased due to the effect of guard coverage and, with this, ensure that the staffing for care in clinics and hospitals is not affected due to the workers’ refusal to cover this service.
The Senate decided to delay the Earnings exemption law for health workers in order to expand it
This was what motivated both the original text and the new wording of the Senate. The initiative established two types of exemptions: one for the guards in unfavorable sanitary zones thus declared by the health authority” and another by number of guards per month throughout the country.
Thus, it established that “remuneration received as guards” passive or active in public or private health centers “throughout the national territory” will be exempt from earnings when the provision exceeds “the number of four (4) monthly guards 24 hours”.
The change that the Senate made unifies both exemptions by changing the wording of the article and establishes that “remunerations received for mandatory active or passive guard duty and overtime performed by professionals, technicians, assistants, and operational personnel are exempt from the tax” when “the provision of the service is carried out” in public or private centers “throughout the national territory”, regardless of the number of hours.
The arguments of the senators
The person in charge of announcing the change was the president of the Budget and Finance Committee, Ricardo Guerra (In Front of All). “This is clearly a Marked expansion of the benefit established by the project with half a penalty“, highlighted the senator from La Rioja.
Guerra remarked that what is intended to be done with this change is “incentivize guards” to “strengthen the provision of health services” especially in towns in the interior of the country, which is “where it is most needed,” according to what he said.
Meanwhile, the senator from Together for Change Mario Fiad confirmed the support of that bench for the change. “We are fully convinced that it is necessary urgently improve the conditions of workers in the health, who are suffering a deep crisis”.
The change to the project exempts all remuneration for guards and not only when they exceed four per month
In turn, the president of the Health Commission, Paul Yedlinalso from the Frente de Todos, explained that “During the pandemic, the Earnings exemption for the entire health system was in force, but in 2021 that stopped” and now they are trying to resume due to the lack of personnel that the tax usually generates.
“It makes it so that at some point it is no longer convenient for them to keep guards and that we are left with less availability of doctors in therapies in general, but in the ambulance services too“, Yedlin explained when justifying the project and the sensitive change that the Senate has now introduced to extend it to the entire sector.
Unlike what happened last November in the Chamber of Deputies, there was no discussion about the “patch” that the project implies about a fundamental problem: the deterioration of wages due to the effect of inflation that makes the Income Tax Profits becomes more distortive and forces temporary changes.
