This Tuesday, December 12, the first debate at the plenary session of the National Assembly will include the proposal of the Organic Law on Economic Efficiency and Employment with amendments that, at least for the real estate sector, are not sufficient regarding the occasional sale of goods.property.

The Association of Ecuadorian Entrepreneurs (Apive) points out that what the Commission for Economic Development is proposing for the first debate is a return to the tax regime of former President Guillermo Lasso. “It harms more than 60% of the population who save through real estate, only to privilege the 1% who invest through the instruments of the financial system.”

On Sunday, December 10, the legislative committee unanimously approved the report for the first debate on tax reform sent by President Daniel Noboa, with changes to the original proposal, among which is the abolition of the income tax (IR). about the disposal of real estate, which Apive describes as “imprecise”.

The real estate sector warns that, if the government’s urgent bill is adopted, it will affect those who occasionally sell real estate

The proposal of the executive power proposed reforms of several legal bodies, such as the Organic Law for Economic Development and Fiscal Sustainability. There, Article 24 requested the deletion of the fifteenth transitional provision.

This provision, which is in force, indicates that the PK taxing the occasional transfer of real estate by natural persons or companies will not arise for the first transfer of real estate ownership that is carried out from the date of validity to up to five years after the publication in the Official Register, which occurred in November 2021 .

For the spokesperson of Apive, Jaime Rumbe, it is important that in this matter the members of the assembly understand the interrelationship between the regime before the former president Guillermo Lasso, the regime after the Lasso tax reform, as well as the transitional regime that suspends that later Lasso reform regime for five years and the Noboa project. “We’re talking about a debate where you need minds that can manage four simultaneous regimes.”

Unanimously, the Commission for Economic Development of the National Assembly accepts the report for the first debate on the draft Law on Economic Efficiency.

At the moment when legislators try to eliminate Noboa from the text of the law – says Rumbea – what they are doing is falling into the Lasso regime, i.e. into what is currently in force and in which “IR is imposed on the occasional transfer of real estate”, while as a rule before Lasso “it was not imposed”.

“When (members of the assembly) say: ‘we eliminated the tax’ what they did was to eliminate the text of Nobo, but they did not eliminate the tax, (because) they fall under the regime of Las, which is in a transitional regime, so they think that this tax does not apply, but in reality this tax will start to be applied… The tax exists, it is only temporarily suspended”, he explains.

Rumbea states that it would start to apply from 2026, according to what is in force in the fifteenth transitional provision.

In view of this, Apive proposes to return to what was in force before what was approved in the regime of Guillermo Lasso, replacing article 9 paragraph 14 of the Nobo project with the text of this exemption that was in force before ​​​​Lasso’s tax reforms. and ensuring that he is saying what he has always said that savings or real estate investments are given fair treatment to the treatment that the law gives to other paper investment instruments that have exempt income.

Pursuant to the Organic Law on Legislative Function, the tax reform report was sent to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Henry Kronfle. This will be discussed at the plenary session this Tuesday starting at 3:45 p.m., we officially learned from the Legislative function.