Transactions with Zelle, PayPal and Reserve must pay the IGTF tax

The National Integrated Tax and Customs Administration Service (Seniat) explained that transactions carried out through payment gateways such as Zelle, PayPal, Reserve and other similar ones will be taxed by the Tax on Large Financial Transactions (IGTF in Spanish) because they are carried out without the intervention of the Venezuelan financial system.

The General Manager of Legal Services of the Seniat, Carlos Ernesto Padrón Rocca, spoke about the direct consultation of Edwuard Rafael Sucre Guzmán, inspection manager of the tax authority, related to the most common doubts that arise around the reform of the Income Tax. the Large Financial Transactions (IGTF). The new tax imposes a 3 % tax on payments with foreign currency and cryptoactives other than the petro.

The document was cited by different accounts through the instant messaging social network Twitter and although the measure directly impacts the consumer, who must pay more to use foreign currency, the businesses are the ones that have to adapt to this new tax mechanism.

Businesses are “going through a torment” to be able to collect the tax, because they must adapt their systems and that has some technical implications. In addition, the lack of information and the “gaps in the regulation” did not allow businesses to fix their systems before the tax came into effect.

All this situation has caused that 75 % of the companies in the commercial sector do not have the capacity to collect the tax in dollars. According to data provided by the National Council for Commerce and Services (Consecomercio).

Limitations for the collection of the IGTF

Tiziana Polesel, president of Consecomercio, highlighted that the main limitation that merchants are experiencing in collecting the tax is the impossibility of replacing or updating the fiscal machines, in order to be able to reflect the amount of the IGTF on the invoice.

According to Polesel, solving this situation requires a significant investment that many businesses, especially small ones, are not able to do in “a short time”. “They do not even have the possibility of resorting to loans,” she stressed.

The president of Consecomercio highlighted: “We are convinced that we must correct it. We have to understand how the sector works and what the weaknesses are in order to incorporate this contribution. We are not denying compliance, we are just asking for more time to make it work.“

The representative of the commercial sector highlighted that there is the possibility of an “increasing degree of informality, since businesses that cannot comply with the regulations will not stop operating but will migrate to that unregulated market that even affects the State, since VAT would not be paid either”.

M. Rodríguez

Source: primicia.com.ve