The official project of raising taxes on various electronic products is unconstitutional, contradictory and regressive.
At a time when it is necessary to reduce the technological gap and the distance in terms culture and education in the country, the National Executive sent to Congress a highly questionable bill to raise the VAT and excise taxes apply to different electronic products that are manufactured outside the province of Tierra del Fuego.
If approved, the initiative would generate an increase in the price to be paid by consumers for cell phones, laptops, GPS equipment, computer monitors, televisions, camcorders and digital cameras or air conditioning up to 6000 kilocalories, among other products.
The project will also be at odds with principles enshrined in the Constitution, it is absolutely inconsistent with the purposes stated more than once by the national government in the sense of bringing all Argentines to new technologies.
In seeking to qualify as "luxury goods" to the goods mentioned, the national authorities do nothing to contradict decisions taken in recent years to encourage, through subsidies or measures to encourage lending, the purchase of many of those products the general public. Mention should plan my PC, which included personal bank loan officers, and even the recent measures of consumer breath to face the danger of recession.
Similarly, certain provinces, as San Luis, launched plans with the intention that the technology was available to all, with funding from the provincial government interest-free purchase of computers, giving buyers a transferable tax credit for 50 percent of the value. Today
economic growth rates are directly related to the rate at which increases productivity. Technology becomes then crucial. Similarly, sustained economic development and even required as a condition of decreasing the digital divide today difference in their opportunities to those who have access to new technologies in their daily lives of those who have no access to them.
official initiative incurred when he says glaring contradictions in its foundation, that "those who have more" must work "in the formation of reserves needed to cope with better means the international financial crisis and those goods that require a high consumption energy, so as to encourage the rational use of energy. "
The contradiction is that the tax increase will be completely regressive, and that will hamper the sectors with fewer resources to purchase electronic products, increasing the digital divide and making access to information less affluent portion of society. This barrier also be extended to schools, both public and private, and universities.
Similarly, more than poor the government's argument that restrictions on the purchase of this kind of products will enable energy savings. It should be noted that most of the latest technological devices with energy saving devices, unlike most old computers that could hardly be renewed in homes, schools and small businesses adopted the initiative in question.
The unreasonableness of the rule advocated by the executive branch emerges clearly, as part of false principles. At the same time, it would violate Article 75, paragraph 18 of the Constitution, under which Congress must "provide what the prosperity of the country, the advancement and welfare of all the provinces, and the progress of enlightenment" .
It is more than remarkable that the government initiative intended to benefit only the province of Tierra del Fuego, which would violate the constitutional principle of equality. One wonders whether this decision can not be interpreted as a compensation approach that kirchnerismo both to the ruling group recently showed the president as two senators fueguina for that district, recently expelled from the IRA, who voted in favor of the advancement of national elections.
is hoped that the project in question is seriously debated in the working committees of legislatures and their members warn both its profound contradictions as the inconvenience to the general public, who should pay much more for products Only those who deny the progress and education can qualify as luxury.
Note
The Nation, published on May 21, 2009.
