Taxi drivers “consider it very convenient” for the sector that the tax reform presented by the Government re-includes them as popular companies in the Tax Regime for Entrepreneurs and Popular Companies (Rimpe) and that the obligation of electronic invoicing is abolished.

“We are returning to the sales list or billing that we did before, i.e. tothe invoice block has not yet been defined, we have to see what the National Assembly says in that project,” he says Jorge Gómez, president of the Guayas Taxi Drivers Union.

Rimpe: Popular companies that have annual sales of up to $2,500 will not pay taxes under the tax reform

According to Gómez, the union he leads brings together 114 affiliated cooperatives at the provincial level, so there are about 13,000 registered taxi drivers. While about 100,000 would be registered in the National Federation of Taxis.

He says that they have already held a meeting with the director of the Tax Administration (SRI) Francisco Briones through the National Federation of Taxis and the Provincial Union of Taxi Drivers, where they made a proposal, because the taxi drivers had already entered the electronic invoicing system, but not 100% because not all of them know how to use electronic system, in this case a touch phone.

“It was a bit complicated for us, because at the moment when the user asked for the bill, we had to take out the phone, make the appropriate movements, ask the passenger for information, and that was certainly complicated, and even for the user it was embarrassing, he did not want to give the ID number , it was even a little dangerous with what we are going through in the country now,” he says.

Electronic billing complicates taxi drivers, they are trained against time, but do not have digital taximeters that SRI requires to apply the mechanism

Gómez says that electronic invoicing was usually done by corporate taxi drivers, those who make careers in companies, he estimates that 15% of the sector did it with this modality, this at the level of Guayas.

It also highlights the implementation of the income tax payment table for popular companies, which establishes that establishments with annual sales of up to $2,500 will not pay, and for those exceeding that value up to $20,000, quotas will be progressive. , which is a maximum of $60, according to the reform.

The leader indicates that in the case of his sector, they do not exceed 10,000 – 12,000 dollars per year, so he believes that he will have to pay a fee between 10 and 15 dollars. “This is more or less what we proposed to the government. “With so much competition in the informal sector, work in the sector has declined greatly,” he points out.