Kirchnerism, libertarians and the left come together again in the Buenos Aires Legislature to try to defeat Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.
The opposition to Horacio Rodríguez Larreta begins to find points of union to corner the head of the Buenos Aires Government, beyond their ideological differences.
Last August he managed to abolish the crane hauling service and now intends to lower the tax on credit cards In Buenos Aires city.
The so-called Anti-Crane Front, where Kirchnerism, libertarians and the left converge, called a special session of the Buenos Aires Legislature next Thursday, October 13, to repeal the 1.2% tax on card expenses, which began to be collected in 2021.
They are still two votes short of a quorum. But they hope that in these two weeks some legislators from Together for Change will join the proposal, as happened last August with the Civic Coalition, which at the last moment supported the cancellation of the agreement with the cranes.
“We presented the project to repeal the card tax with Eugenio Casielles (Federal Consensus), who is my best friend, and with Juan Manuel Valdés (Frente de Todos), who we are all a sub-’40 generational group,” legislator Ramiro Marra told Clarinfrom La Libertad Avanza, the porteño arm of Javier Milei.
“The city of Buenos Aires is having a surplus, so you can stop charging this tax on credit cards, with which they plan to raise $25 billion this year,” added Marra.
In the same sense, the Kirchnerist legislator Valdés expressed himself: “We have been promoting the repeal of the tax on credit cards, in a city that has a surplus, along with the same blocks that we managed to cancel the agreement with the tow trucks.”
It is that in mid-August, an agreement between Kirchnerism, the libertarians and the left managed to get the Buenos Aires government to discharge the controversial agreement of the haulage service due to bad parking, a concession with BRD and Dakota, which had already expired and had multiple questions.
Now the same political agreement is being reissued of the Anti-Crane Front, but to lower the Buenos Aires tax on credit cards. And some are even deluded that this type of agreement serves as a precedent to repeal the PASO elections at the national level.
Kirchnerist legislator Valdés is enthusiastic about the possibility of expanding the agenda of the Anti-Crane Front to other issues, such as the fiscal value of the properties and the ratings on the Costanera, among other issues.
The legislator of the Left Front (FIT), alexandrina barryaccompanies the project to repeal the tax on credit cards, because it is “a totally regressive tax that affects working and middle-class families, because many of the purchases, especially food, are made with credit cards.”
But the FIT stands out from other tax cuts, “As they did with the large construction companies or the fast food chains, which gave them tax cuts due to the pandemic and are still in force. We were the only ones who voted against those tax cuts. But the card tax is a tax regressive that punishes the popular sectors,” said Barry.
The position of the Buenos Aires government
The tax on credit cards was created by the Buenos Aires government of Rodríguez Larreta to partially compensate for the removal of the federal co-participation, which they estimate in a cut of $250,000 million between September 2020 and the end of 2022.
“In order to compensate for such a loss of resources, The City drastically cut public spending, suspending the works plan and renegotiating the large administration contracts,” said a source from the Buenos Aires government.
And he added: “On the other hand, actions aimed at generating new income were implemented. One of them was the stamp tax on credit cards of 1.2%, tribute that has existed for years in the Province of Buenos Aires and several other provinces”.
this tax governs temporarily in the city of Buenos Aires, until the Supreme Court resolves the return of the money withheld by the national government.
“It is a public commitment of the Buenos Aires Government that, in the event that the Court rules in favor of the city and this whole situation of co-participation goes back, this tax will be eliminated automatically,” assured sources close to Rodríguez Larreta.
It will be necessary to see when the Supreme Court dictates its ruling and in what sense it does so, to wait for a decision from the Government of the City of Buenos Aires. But also it may happen that the opposition of the Anti-Crane Front manages to add two unruly votes of Together for Change, to carry out the special session of the Buenos Aires Legislature that repeals the tax on credit cards.