Fiscal regulations and bureaucracy are killing many businesses

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    It's not just the national laws with the change of government that make running a business in Argentina extremely difficult, but also local bureaucracy.

    An exchange house (casa de cambio), Columbus, that has been in Lavalle St since 1966 closed its doors yesterday due to the exchange clamp (cepo) of USD200 per month. On the very same day, yesterday, they were raided by the Naval Police (prefectura), the Federal Police and the central bank, ransacking their offices in a final act of humiliation.

    Another exchange house will close soon, like many others, since neither this government or Macri's have ever been sympathetic to these types of businesses.

    That's people out of work, in short.

    Another is a B&B in Nuñez, plagued by local bye-laws, local taxes and mindless bureaucracy has decided to simply let all their rooms as rentals.

    I mention these three examples as they are clients of an accountant very close to me, so the knock-on effects are enormous.

    Even in difficult times, Argentina seems set on shooting itself in the foot, time after time.

    I assume that exchange houses might have a relationship with the govt that is more complicated than most of us can fully understand, especially when a cepo is in effect. But a B&B seems like such a straightforward small business that it seems the local govt should be grateful to have them.

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    Even when the clamp wasn't in effect they were being scrutinised and raided and as for small businesses - the idea is to screw as much extra taxes and other charges out of the business as possible.

    It does after all keep the wanker fucking inspectors in a job for life.

    I had an inspector come to my shop in La Lucila because I hadn't bothered to get license (habilitacion) approval. I actually told him to fuck off and never come back. He didn't come come back either.

    It was his higher than mighty attitude that made me angry.

    Probably the people who were running the B&B were honest and good.


    My wife deals with all that side of the business and it drives her mad. She's recently been spending more time with the accountant than she has with me. ^^ I haven't a clue how things work here but I can imagine if you do things 'right' then you're going to be up against it due to all the layers of bureaucracy that there is here.


    OTOH small businesses are everywhere here. 75% of them would never survive in the UK so they must be up to something dodgy.