Some 30,000 professionals in the information technology (IT) sector work abroad and receive income in foreign currency, according to estimates by companies and clusters operating in Argentina. However, businessmen in the sector reject the technological monotribute project approved this week in the Chamber of Deputies.
The technology monotribute initiative, which seeks to enable these professionals to regularize his financial and tax situation, had this week the half sanction of Deputies.
The Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa; the Secretary of Knowledge Economy, Ariel Sujarchuk; and the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Cecilia Moreau, celebrated the approval of the initiative as a “huge step towards the financial and tax regularization of gamers and freelance programmers who earn in foreign currency and who wish to have their income in Argentina.” .
The general secretary of the Computer Union Association (AGC), Ezequiel Tosco, also considered positive the half sanction that the Chamber of Deputies gave to the technological monotribute project and told Télam that “we hope that the Senate will accompany it.”
He explained that the initiative “can order, register and launder a reality that exists in the sector and that today is in the informal sector; this benefits workers, who will be able to justify their earnings to the collection agencies and will be able to contribute to social security, and to the State, which will be able to dispose of those dollars in the BCRA, collect the taxes and manage the corresponding pension contributions”.
The technological monotributo ensures that IT professionals can regularize their financial and tax situation
For his part, Ignacio Lonzieme, general secretary of Unión Informática, agreed that the measure “is an advance on several points but it will not solve the underlying issue, these issues make it necessary to adopt new tools and that the collection be different. “.
In his opinion “it is necessary to keep control over exports” and stressed that “the labor dimension of professionals is lacking, addressing their own organization and difficulties when it comes to consolidating as companies and a long etcetera”.
Companies reject the technological monotribute
From the private sector, the executive director of Argencon, the entity that brings together companies that export services from the knowledge economy, Luis Galeazzi, questioned the measure because it creates “a great salary asymmetry among those who are under the monotribute, that is, individual workers and professionals employed by companies”.
“The individual monotributista sells his services in a state of creation of minimum value for Argentina. The creation of greater value for the country is done by companies that work organically, generate projects, innovation, which are on the frontier of knowledge,” he added. .
A recent statement signed by chambers, computer centers and business clusters, indicated that “although there is still no official data, it is estimated that some 30,000 professionals in the IT sector today work abroad as a result of the incentive generated by the possibility of charging in foreign currency”.
They agreed that the “brain drain from the technology sector highlights a very complex situation that is difficult to resolve in the short term: the lack of competitiveness for local companies to hire and retain their talents as a result of the exchange rate gap.”
It is estimated that some 30,000 IT sector professionals work abroad
They also stated that they understood that the technological monotribute “seeks for freelancers to formalize their activity but, above all, what it seeks is for enter the currencies that the country so urgently needs. This would be achieved as long as a significant number of freelancers sign up for this new regime and agree to bring the foreign currency they generate abroad.”
The technological monotribute is a tool for those who have received between US$10,000 and US$30,000 for their work for foreign companies in the last 12 months.
The initiative approved by Deputies creates a single tax category for “individual workers” who export services abroad, and the requirements to access it are to reside in Argentina, to be a human person and with income in the last months less than or equal to US$30. 000 in the last twelve months.
The measure provides for three categories: the first for those who have had income equal to or less than US$10,000, another for up to US$20,000 and the third for up to US$30,000 per year.
According to the chosen category, they will be able to charge up to that amount without having to settle the currencies in the Free Exchange Market, they explained from the Knowledge Economy Secretariat.
For the Government, the measure “promotes registered work with access to social security and retirement contributions; expands the collection of foreign currency; has no fiscal cost; and is positioned as an inclusive measure that increases the rights of knowledge exporters to abroad”.
