The Government assures that the agreement is broader than what some accountants estimated and that data is already flowing from the United States
For Claudio Zlotnik
01/06/2023 – 00,25hs
The Government let it be known in the last few hours that, contrary to what had been reported among some accounting firms, AFIP may have information on the accounts of Argentines in the United States with retroactivity.
“On individual cases, not in a massive way, you can obtain information on Argentine investment cases since 2018“, the General Director of Customs, Guillermo Michel, told iProfessional.
“Today, there is already an exchange of 68 Argentine taxpayers,” the official pointed out.
The Government came out, thus, at the crossroads of versions to the contrary that had come out from some accounting offices. According to these speculations, the AFIP could only have information as of January 1, which is when the information exchange agreement with the United States entered into force.
However, now from Sergio Massa’s team they point out that, based on a previous agreement with the US, there are chances to investigate from 2018. That pact, signed in 2016, makes available to the AFIP the financial data of Argentine citizens by simply requesting them from the US tax administration, the IRS.
It’s case by case; not sending information in bulk. It is done at the request of Argentina when there are suspicions of evasion by the AFIP. It is what makes it different from FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act).
The tax information exchange agreement will allow AFIP to access data from 2018.
Undeclared dollars in the US: the government’s strategy
When asked by iProfessional, Michel commented that there is a very clear way to find “black” accounts of Argentines in banks in the United States.
“We can identify groups of Argentine taxpayers whose characteristics allow us to infer that they have mirror accounts in the United States. In general, they operate with two bank accounts: an account declared A and an account B, the latter without declaring before the AFIP,” says the official.
The information that the Government has is that the wall street banks they used to offer investors two types of accounts. A “blank” in which a credit card was associated to meet consumption. And another “in black” (secret), not declared, in which investments (Treasury bonds and other financial instruments) were deposited, which were not declared in Buenos Aires.
money laundering
As the Government assures that it will be able to access information from 2018, at the same time it will try to launch a laundering.
For this reason, it will convene extraordinary sessions in Congress in the next few hours, with the aim of sanctioning the law that enables this operation.
“We aspire to the money laundering law be concerned in extraordinary sessions. To those who have an irregular situation before the AFIP, we recommend an externalization, because there will be incentives for the repatriation of capital,” the minister said in radio statements.
