Buenos Aires Issues a 'Netflix Tax' For All Digital Entertainment

New submitter DoILookAmused writes A few years ago, the Argentinean government implemented a 35% tax on all offshore buys using a credit card. In yesterday's press release, the city of Buenos Aires announced it will charge a 3% gross income tax for all streaming or media purchase abroad allegedly to bring it to "competitive prices with local media companies". This tax doesn't supersede the national 35% tax, which has sparked several reactions.

Comments

To the slashdotters of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Argentinian here.

Please understand that policy in Argentina is usually just the result of the guys on top wanting more hookers or coke. Usually both. There is no justification to these taxes whatsoever other than "we want to steal more money for ourselves, but we already stole everything in sight... so we need you idiots to put more money in this account here so we can steal it."

Argentina is very much like your neighborhood friendly African nation, only with less ebola and civil war.

Re:To the slashdotters of the world

[Opportunist]

Why do you think we would have assumed that Argentina is different from the rest of the world?

Re:To the slashdotters of the world

[TheDarkMaster]

Is the same shit here in Brazil. 60% tax in all international purchases made by individuals under the guise of "protecting" a nonexistent national industry (nobody makes Intel i7 in Brazil as far as I know).

Re:To the slashdotters of the world

[rogoshen1]

Argentina in the 50's was also on track to become a first world developed nation -- with GDP per capita on par with that of France (and ahead of Germany!) =(
Considering the lack of bombed out factories, a missing generation of working age men, what happened exactly?

Oh, Argentina

[bill_mcgonigle]

For those who don't know, Argentina is on the brink of economic collapse yet again. Their occupying government has ruined the currency with wishful thinking as if it didn't just happen a decade or so ago. They've been trying to negotiate away all the bad debt they've run up and not everybody is letting them off the hook this time. Like good bureaucrats they're probably looking to tax anything that moves.

3% tax on Netflix? pfft - last time they confiscated pensions and retirement accounts. Oh, sorry, they didn't confiscate them, they replaced the negotiable cash value of them with government-backed bonds. Which rapidly fell to zero value.

FWIW, the US DoL floated an RFC on 'protecting' retirement accounts by replacing them with bonds a few years ago. Nobody should be undiversified in their retirement savings jurisdictions.

Re:Oh, Argentina

[Kjella]

For those who don't know, Argentina is on the brink of economic collapse yet again. Their occupying government has ruined the currency with wishful thinking as if it didn't just happen a decade or so ago. They've been trying to negotiate away all the bad debt they've run up and not everybody is letting them off the hook this time.

Actually, it is the old debt default from 2001 causing them to default now. In two rounds in 2005 and 2010 some 92% of their creditors agreed to cut 65% of their debt through new bonds - over a barrel, of course. The last 8% want all of it with full interest, but they're not getting anywhere in Argentinian courts. However, now they've gotten a ruling in a US court that Argentine can't pay interest on the new bonds without also paying them in full. Which Argentine can't, because part of the agreement with the other 92% is that nobody else will get a better deal so it would invalidate everything. They could make a backroom deal to make somebody else buy out the last 8% and swap for new bonds, but that's basically paying these guys off and setting a very, very bad precedent for later debt negotiations.

Instead they decided to play hardball back and just default, meaning those 8% get nothing - and neither do the 92% who agreed to new bonds. It's basically a giant game of chicken, who backs down first - Argentine because they want to get back on the international financial markets or will the last 8% figure 35% today is better than dreaming of getting their 100% + interest back forever. Argentine actually manages their finances quite well at the moment, being cut off from international credit means they've had to bring their budgets in balance and from the looks of it they can stay defaulted for quite some time.

Re:Oh, Argentina

[beltsbear]

Close. Argentina did not play hardball. The US courts confiscated the money they had access to preventing the payments to the 92%. Argentina will not fund those payments anymore if the US courts re going to take the money before it gets to it's intended recipients.

thats to spendy

[lister king of smeg]

a 35% tax on all offshore buys using a credit card

With that kind of tariff how long till all out of country purchases are made with bitcoin?

Re:thats to spendy

[bobbied]

At that rate, I bet there's a market for Argentinians to mail me cash, which I'll use to establish them a Paypal account. Hell, if Paypal and I both take 10% they still come out on top.

Well, that would be great, if they could send you cash. If you want to take Argentina's currency, you are a fool, and if you require dollars, they cannot legally get them to send to you. If they could, they'd all be out moving all their local currency into dollars already.

Re:IRS Planning the same

[roman_mir]

U.S. Hikes Fee To Renounce Citizenship By 422%

To leave America, you generally must prove 5 years of U.S. tax compliance. If you have a net worth greater than $2 million or average annual net income tax for the 5 previous years of $157,000 or more for 2014 (thatâ(TM)s tax, not income), you pay an exit tax. It is a capital gain tax as if you sold your property when you left. At least thereâ(TM)s an exemption of $680,000 for 2014. Long-term residents giving up a Green Card can be required to pay the tax too.

Now, the State Department interim rule just raised the fee for renunciation of U.S. citizenship to $2,350 from $450. Critics note that itâ(TM)s more than twenty times the average level in other high-income countries. The State Department says itâ(TM)s about demand on their services and all the extra workload they have to process people who are on their way out.

You are no longer born a free person, you are born into slavery. You have to buy your freedom and the price will keep going up. At $450 the price was already 4.5 times higher than in most other countries. Now it will be nearly 24 times more than for other countries.

You should be able to renounce your citizenship and leave for free, instead you are going to be prevented from leaving at all eventually, they'll jack up the price to the share of your national debt that you are born into and that is borrowed on your behalf by your government and only the wealthiest slaves will be able to get out. They will definitely prevent you from leaving eventually if you have any debts at all, including your student debt. The 2350USD change is starting on the 12th of September 2014, you can still get out at a low low price of 450USD.

Those walls they are building on your borders, they are not there to keep others out, they are there to keep you in. IRS is part of that system.

Sad

[Nicopa]

I'm form Argentina and it saddens me that this post comments will fall among these categories:

• Peple saying "don't cry for me XXX".
• Argentines explaining that Argentina is the worst country, worse than the worst.
• Uninformed right-wing people talking about Cuba, communism.

Even the summary is wrong! That 35% is not a tax, just a pre-payment of the income tax that you can recover.

All hope is lost.