The mayor of Pilar, Federico AchávalI just increased it Environmental Law Feea concept that lacks a clear explanation for its application to supermarket shopping. The change consists of replacing a fixed amount with a rate of 2% on purchases in supermarkets and hypermarkets.
Considering a typical family – a couple in their thirties and two small children, according to the Indec classification for the basic food basket – monthly spending in supermarkets can be up to $700,000. The basic food basket in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires was $544,000 per month in October, but when cleaning and personal care items are added to this value, the minimum budget of $700,000 makes sense.
If companies use the new plan to pass the cost on to the consumer, each family will have to pay $14,000 more per month for their usual purchases. To avoid the tax, families rarely choose to drive to neighboring communities because what would be saved through the tax is usually spent on fuel.
Mayor Achaval’s logic is to demand small amounts from a large number of people, sufficient to collect them without causing a social reaction. In addition, since the tariff is not discriminated in the account, the citizen could think that the supermarket has increased its prices and ignore the role of the municipality.
Mayor Achaval’s logic is to demand small amounts from a large number of people, sufficient to raise money without causing a social reaction.
Meanwhile, the community receives an additional $14,000 for the neighbor’s entire monthly purchase, and the total monthly income represents a significant sum. The consumer, on the other hand, does not find sufficient incentive to protest while the local government maximizes its revenue.
Mancur Olson analyzed this type of phenomenon in The logic of collective action: Small groups as producers who benefit from protectionism can easily organize to exert pressure and gain advantages, while the large majorities do not mobilize because the individual costs are small and diffuse.
In Argentina the tax system has become a factor of decline. Democracy tends towards populist competition, where housing, subsidies and social services are offered in the name of social solidarity, but these are always ultimately financed by progressive taxes or fees on minorities that impact the productive sectors.
The result is that politicians win votes in the short term by punishing those who invest and create work, but over time companies leave, productivity falls and real incomes fall.
Not only do municipalities limit themselves to financing basic functions, they use taxes as tools to put pressure on those who produce and distribute in the name of a welfare system that ultimately punishes everyone equally.
In Pilar, this increase affects all consumers, even if the additional costs are not visible on the ticket, burdening the company with the negative image of the price increase.
As in other districts of Buenos Aires, the municipality also levies other unusual taxes such as advertising and propaganda, official rights and capital gains.
The municipality imposes other unusual taxes such as advertising and propaganda, office law, and capital gains.
Juan Bautista Alberdi he has already pointed this out in his Economic and pension system: “Until now, the worst enemy of the country’s wealth has been the wealth of the treasury. We owe the old colonial regime the legacy of this fundamental flaw in its Spanish economy.” We are countries with a fiscal orientationCities organized to generate real income. Simple tributaries or settlers, for three centuries we are still the work of that predecessor who has more power than our written constitutions. After being machines of the Spanish treasury, we have become machines of the treasury: that’s the whole difference. After we were colonists of Spain, we were colonists of our national governments: always tax states, always submissive income machines that never arrive because the Misery and backwardness cannot achieve anything“.
P.S: I don’t live in the municipality of Pilar.
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