Soy imported from Paraguay: Customs intimidated four grain companies because of the million figure and is investigating more maneuvers

The customs administration called big four companies for debts of more than 50 million dollars.

As reported by the guard, the giants Cofco, Cargill, Bunge and Dreyfus used a mechanism to pay minor withholding taxes on imported soybean exports under Paraguay’s interim regime. The debt values ​​of each company are 14,750,000, 27,050,000, 7,000,000 and 3,730,000, respectively.

The operation consisted in reducing the tax base for the calculation of export duties.

“The idea is for them to pay, that’s why they are intimidated”, explained the sources from the Customs, who assure that one of the intimidated companies “has already been informed”.

“Customs continues to monitor the entire market of grain exporters, to find out if other companies have applied the same calculation logic,” they added.

Export duties on processed soybeans, whether imported or domestic, are calculated based on the price per tonne FOB. Law 21453, on export regulations for agricultural products, clarifies that in both cases, for the calculation of export duties, the official price and tariff treatment in effect on the closing date of the sale reported by the declarant to the Undersecretary for Agricultural Markets shall be applied. . While decree 1177 from 1992 adds that with the official price as the only tax base, it is not appropriate to make any deductions on that base.

What did the grain companies do?

According to Customs, for the temporary import of Paraguayan soybeans, companies apply Regulation 1330 from 2004 on the special regime of temporary import of goods intended for industrial improvement, with the obligation to export for consumption and, additionally, additional treatment taken from the old note 398 of the Administration for Agricultural Markets from 2002 to reduce the tax base.

“Specifically, a percentage of the export deduction was deducted from the official price, and the export duty rate would only be applied to the number resulting from that calculation. In other words, they modified the tax base, downwards, for the calculation of the deduction,” explained the organization he led. Guillermo Michel.

For customs, “the temporary import of soybeans is a wise measure as long as it allows the industrial capacity of Argentina’s agro-export pole to be operational and strengthened and to improve added value.”

However, the agency also claims that “this cannot imply that the technical criterion of the old Minister of Agriculture from 2002 applies to the exception regime created in 2004 (the temporary import regime of Regulation 1330)” since they believe that “there is no economic sense or legal support to is the export of temporary soybean derivatives in better conditions – in terms of the tax base of export duties – compared to the export of soybean derivatives from Argentine producers”.

In 2018, 5.8 million tons were imported from Paraguayfell to 3.8, as a result of the decline in previous production, due to which more was imported in the following years, and these are precisely those that Customs investigated and claimed for.