Excess of tax regimes gives space to evasion and avoidance

Currently, Peru has four tax regimes: the General Regime; Single Simplified Regime (RUS); Special Income Regime (RER) and the Mype Tax Regime (RMT). However, the excess of these has turned out to be complex for small businesses and has given space for some bad taxpayers to carry out avoidance actions or tax evasion.

“We have a regime that does not serve even the small taxpayer who wants to formalizebecause it ends up being complex, nor for the medium or large taxpayer, who finds many spaces for avoidance, evasion or arbitration actions”, he acknowledged Marco Camacho, General Director of Public Revenue Policy of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF).

Faced with this serious problem, the Executive Branch requested powers to legislate -among other issues- in tax matters to simplify the regimes, with the intention that only two remain: the General Regime and the RUS; In addition to making two adjustments in this last scheme to facilitate the taxation of mypes.

In detail, the Vice Minister of Economy, Juan Zósimo explained that the MEF proposes that the RUS go from being associated with a monthly sales amount to an annual one, apart from the fact that this limit is based on a multiple of the UIT, in such a way that it can be updated automatically.

According to the official, this change is due to the fact that in a few months the mypes can obtain income higher than the S/8,000, which causes them to be expelled to another regime. Thus, being subject to annual sales, the Small business they would not have problems with seasonality.

Congress opposes

Despite this, the Parliament’s Economy and Decentralization commissions decided not to give the Executive powers to make these changes through a legislative decree.

For the consideration of both working groups, the Government must present a specific bill to Congress and go through the regular process, as well as its respective analysis with the various groups involved, such as mypes. “We think it is an important initiative, but whose proposal lacked sufficient support. It has been considered that the most convenient thing would be for the Executive branch to issue a bill to Congress in order to promote a broad debate on the subject.“, said rosangella barbaranpresident of the Economic Commission.

Faculties for 33 subjects

Of the 42 measures requested by the Executive to legislate, the congressional commissions only approved 33 issues, which must be discussed in plenary.

“Of the total 42 points, we are giving powers to 33, which represents 79%Approximately, of the entire project that they have presented”, Barbarán explained.