MEF seeks to eliminate tax non-compliance and collect an additional 8% of GDP each year

The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) reported that one of the main objectives of the bill presented to the Congress of the Republic, requesting legislative powers, is to reduce tax avoidance and evasion, through improvements in tax administration .

It is estimated that by eliminating tax non-compliance (which includes delinquency, tax evasion and tax avoidance) in Peru, around 8% of the additional GDP could be collected annually, this is three times the Health budget and twice the Education budget.

“In this way, the high levels of tax non-compliance result in the loss of significant public resources that cannot be used to provide services to the population,” said the MEF.

Faced with this situation, he added that the design of measures that improve control, by Sunat, are required to combat tax non-compliance and contribute to the generation of risk in this class of taxpayers.

Measures to combat tax evasion and avoidance

Among the most important measures to combat tax evasion and avoidance are:

– Attribution of the condition of “subject without operational capacity – SSCO”. False invoices are one of the main causes that erode collection, since they allow the deduction of the expense for the IR and the tax credit for the IGV. For this reason, it is proposed to establish the definition of SSCO status to fight against the issuance of false invoices by “shell companies”.

For this, the SSCO will be defined as the one that does not have the economic, financial, material or human resources or others, that allow it to carry out operations in accordance with the quantity and amounts of the receipts that it issues. This will allow them to be identified based on information collected by Sunat.

Likewise, the procedure for attributing the status of SSCO will be regulated and the mechanism for publicity of this will be established. Mechanisms will be established to resolve the claims that may be presented, guaranteeing the rights of the taxpayer, and the consequences of being an SSCO are foreseen.

This measure will allow tax evaders or evaders to pay the corresponding taxes, anticipating an estimated collection of 687 million soles.

– Regulatory improvement of the Unjustified Capital Increase. “Sunat must take advantage of the new control tools it has through the exchange of information with other countries and access to financial information, among others. In this sense, it seeks to perfect the rule on equity increase in order to avoid it being supported by documents that do not generate conviction about the origin of said increase as it happens today, “he explained.

This obligation to better support the capital increases on the part of the taxpayers, before any request from the Sunat, will allow to deter non-compliance and expand the tax base.

– Incorporate the responsibility of tax advisers who participate or develop tax avoidance schemes. The design of tax avoidance schemes usually requires the participation of tax advisers, since they are the people who know in depth the tax regulations and the spaces that could give rise to avoidance behaviors. In some cases, advisers design and execute elusive schemes, without having any sanction for said conduct or advice.

Therefore, it is proposed to regulate administrative sanctions for tax advisers. As has happened in countries such as Chile and the United Kingdom, it is expected that from this, tax planning will be carried out in accordance with the law, without generating abuses or commission of tax evasion and avoidance.

– The simplification of Tax Regimes. Not only will it discourage the atomisation of companies and cause those who pay to do so properly, but it will also be attractive to formalize the chain of its suppliers of goods and services through the widespread use of electronic payment vouchers. The formalization of workers will also be encouraged, currently 75% of workers in formal microenterprises are informal.

“In this way, through the delegation of powers to legislate, they seek to establish clear and forceful actions to combat evasion and avoidance, allowing more resources to be raised to direct them to key sectors such as: Health, Education, water and sanitation, agriculture and in the implementation of public policies ”, concluded the MEF.