QCOSTARICA — Before recessing for the end vacations, legislators rushed to present a bill to stop taxes on transactions on SINPE Móvil, that go into effect on January 205 on all transactions not deemed personal.
Earlier this week, the Ministerio de Hacienda (Ministry of Finance, announced its plan to close the loophole on small businesses flying under the radar by using SINPE payments to collect payments for merchandise or services, thus avoiding collecting the 13% Impuesto al Valor Agregado (IVA) – Value Added Tax.
On Monday, the Minister of Finance, Nogui Acosta, confirmed that they are in the final stage of designing a plan to modify the Central Bank’s platform.
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Read more: Taxman wants to close tax loophole in SINPE transactions
Withholding, as is done with bank card transactions, would be on SINPE transactions in a few weeks.
The question is, how can the Tax Department distinguish between a commercial transaction and a personal one, such as payment for a slice of pizza and transfers between family members or friends?
“They say it is a retention, how are they going to separate the transactions of small businesses (PYMES in Spanish) and personal ones? What is the lady from the beauty salon to do when she receives money for her daughter or payment from a client? When people go to the farmers’ market, the producer is going to have to raise the price by 13%. They are going to go back to cash again and lose out on the benefits of banking,” stated Eliécer Feinzaig, legislator for the Partido Liberal Progresista and former presidential candidate,
“What the Treasury wants is a tax on tamales,” added Feinzaig.
It is for that reason that Liberals want to prevent any type of IVA retention or other withholding from being applied to SINPE transfers or other similar technological applications.
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“Sinpe has allowed more people to have bank accounts and carry out transactions in a simple way. A tax is a blow to the pockets of Costa Ricans and causes exclusion,” said legislator Johana Obando.
However, the Ministry of Finance has a different opinion. For them, the Treasury is losing out on millions of colones not collected for sales tax on merchandise or services, and the reason why “withholdings” must be applied to SINPE transactions.
In addition, they consider that many businesses are not using electronic invoices, a mechanism that allows the tax department to follow up on tax collections, for example, for them to know which transactions are taking place at a commercial level.
For his part, Francisco Gamboa, Minister of Economy, he said publicly that he will be attentive to the proposal and will ensure the protection of consumers, as well as businesses.
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