LatinNews Daily - 16 December 2024

*Ecuador’s economy and finance minister, Juan Carlos Vega, has said that President Daniel Noboa’s government will present a new tax reform bill in 2025 that will aim to deliver fiscal benefits for the next two decades. Vega said that “what we are aiming for is to deliver a tax reform for the next 20 years, in which some of the country’s distortive taxes are eliminated and we focus much more on universal taxes like income tax, charged at a good rate, with a solid tax base”. Vega also indicated that there would be changes to the rate of value-added tax (VAT) and promised “a simplification of Ecuador’s complex tax scheme, so that domestic and foreign investors have clarity on the long-term tax policy”. He said that the Noboa administration would seek to deliver a fiscal policy “that does not restrict or frighten investors,” citing as good examples of this the tax regimes in Uruguay, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. Ecuador’s government is due to implement another tax reform – the second since Noboa took office in November 2023 – as part of its US$4bn arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which was agreed in May this year.