Incentives for gasoline have added 307.8 billion pesos at the end of September: SAT

Los fiscal stimulus to prevent the gasoline price is triggered has accounted for 307,794 million pesos between January and September, reported the Service tax administration (SAT) in its Tax and Management Report for the Third Quarter.

Of this amount, 190.474 million pesos belong to the fiscal stimulus on the Special Production and Services Tax (IEPS) and 117.320 million of the complementary fiscal stimulus that applies to Income Tax (ISR) or Value Added Tax (VAT) .

The Secretary of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), led by Rogelio Ramírez de la O, explained that if it were not for the fiscal stimuli, inflation would be between 12 and 14 percent. Likewise, fiscal stimuli have prevented a liter of gasoline from costing 35 pesos.

In this sense, the tax incentives on the IEPS for gasoline helped combat the theft and smuggling of hydrocarbon since the payment of said tax is not required on the importation of hydrocarbons.

The incentives also supported the return of the complementary incentive per liter in first-hand sales due to the elimination of incentives for technical and bronco smuggling activities, explained the SAT.

Technical smuggling is when merchandise enters the country with a lower value than it really is; and raw smuggling is the simple entry of goods that do not pay a single tax.

The treasury explained that the legitimate supply of fuel reached 327.5 million barrels between January and September, which meant 89% of the estimated real demand (368.6 million barrels).

In other words, the black market for fuels is 41.1 million barrels and compared to the same period last year it shows a reduction of 26.8 million barrels. Illegitimate demand is estimated to have been 67.9 million barrels in the same period of 2021.

Stimulus impacts collection

However, the cost of tax incentives for gasoline has an impact on collection. At the end of September, tax collection stood at 2.9 trillion pesos, which meant an annual contraction of 0.4% in real terms.

The general IEPS collection was 60,395 million pesos in that period, which meant an annual contraction of 82.3% in real terms. While the IEPS of gasoline and diesel had a negative collection of 85,708 million pesos, which represented an annual contraction of 143% real.

At the same time, it was reported that income tax collection stood at 1.7 billion pesos, an annual increase of 14.7 percent. The collection of VAT registered 944,224 million pesos, at the end of September, an annual increase of 1.8 percent.

santiago.renteria@eleconomista.mx