The national and Buenos Aires collection agencies activated massive embargoes on companies that cannot pay taxes because sales are not enough. The existing payment plans are insufficient and the business chambers speak of chain bankruptcies. The provincial treasury blames Milei. Merchants, meanwhile, have to choose between paying salaries or paying taxes.
The drop in consumption has been going on for months and its effects are no longer limited to the balance sheets of companies: now they reach the courts. ARK and ARBA They intensified their compulsory collection mechanisms just when the productive sector can least respond, and the result is a combination that several business chambers describe as a dead-end trap.
The Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services sent a formal letter to the executive director of ARCA, Andrés Vázquez, to warn that embargoes on amounts receivable from clients of delinquent companies can affect smaller businesses. The mechanism is novel and, according to businessmen, particularly aggressive: ARCA directly notifies the clients of a debtor company so that they withhold their payments and deposit them with the agency. The money never reaches the supplier’s account. The commercial flow is cut off.
The Business Confederation of the Argentine Republic (CGERA) proposed something similar: they ask for payment plans that allow SMEs to regularize debts without implying the collapse of their daily operations. The head of the entity, Marcelo Fernández, was direct: there are companies that cannot pay salaries and, therefore, do not retain. If withholding taxes becomes a criminal tax case, the scenario becomes even more complicated.
Is the treasury being efficient or is it destroying the productive fabric that it will later need to continue collecting? The question is not rhetorical. The secretary of the Avellaneda Industrial Union, Federico Cuomo, pointed out that the government’s logic prioritizes cash over the continuity of companies, and that the largest seizures are also those that are executed the fastest.
Provincial pressure is added to the national pressure. ARBA also accelerated its procedures, and cases appeared in Buenos Aires territory that a tax lawyer publicly described as irregular: Banco Provincia would have executed seizures on overdrawn taxpayers, in practice forcing them to go into debt with the bank to pay the province. ARBA’s official response was that precautionary measures are the last resort, but that the increase in delinquencies is a direct consequence of Javier Milei’s economic policies.
This cross accusation between the Nation and the Province occurs while the president of the Economic Federation of Chaco warns that the fiscal pressure is felt more strongly in the interior of the country, where the twenty-four provincial federations have already raised a joint claim to CAME to request broader plans and fewer compulsory executions. The Argentine Confederation of Medium Enterprises, for its part, asked Minister Caputo for a special regime of facilities: the current scheme of eight to twelve installments, they say, is not enough to deal with debts that grow at high rates.
What is clear is that many companies have already made their decision: first they pay salaries and suppliers, then taxes. While the State demands, consumption continues without showing signs of recovery.
