Municipal revenues in Mexico are well below universal standards, due to two issues: the fear of some of the “political cost” of collecting taxes or, flatly, the most real thing, which is tax collection indifference, since they prefer a fiscal coordination system. , with the most important centralized federal taxes, relying on the fiscal effort of the collection administration of the central or federal government. An old governor of Sonora called this “fiscal pimping.”
It is relevant to see in federal countries like ours, how we waste potential property income to meet the most essential municipal needs, for which only a few comparisons are useful that would force us to cry or make an effort to collect what the municipal authorities owe. That at the end of the year, they beg the state governments to help them pay Christmas bonuses, for not making the correct forecasts.
It is true that in a country like ours, inequality permeates the entire country, more than half of the municipalities have marginality or high marginality and indeed poverty prevents monetary collection of their taxes, but community work always remains as the system of uses and customs of Oaxaca and other states of the southeast.
Let’s see the size of inequality and fiscal responsibility, for example, according to OECD data, Canada collects 4,154 of GDP from property taxes, and Mexico 0.3 percent. This is almost 15 times less.
Now, according to ECLAC data from 2020, in Latin America, Argentina collects 3.25 percent of GDP, Uruguay 2.05, Chile 11.1, Costa Rica 0.45 and Mexico only 0.27 percent of GDP. Argentina surpasses us in 12 times and Uruguay in eight.
On the other hand, the collection of property tax in Mexico has not exceeded 0.23 percent for years. In my time at UCEF there were no more than 100 municipalities, the ones that collected the most from property taxes, 100 of the approximate 2,500. There has been neither interest nor collection responsibility.
I remember an anecdote from poor municipalities in Guerrero that sought me out and when I asked them how they are doing with property taxes, their response was clear, “we don’t charge for that, it has a political cost, we better demand the governor, who is from another party,” it was Zeferino Torreblanca, and well you can’t.
The level of municipal development does not matter, but the fiscal interest to collect and the budgetary responsibility to spend. Public resources are scarce and their use must be responsible and transparent. In the end it is common sense, like at home, you do not spend on what you should not, nor do you hide resources that are not yours.
Something more pathetic: of the 2,500 municipalities, 12 plus CDMX, concentrate half of the property tax collection, according to data from the SHCP. Indeed, in descending order: Zapopan, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Querétaro, Juárez, León, Chihuahua, Puebla, Tijuana, Culiacán, Benito Juárez and San Pedro Garza García. I remember that the UCEF only kept a record of the 100 municipalities with the highest property tax collection, today I do not have the updated data.
We are concerned because more than 90 percent of the tax regime is centralized at the federal level, derived from the Adhesion Agreement of the National Fiscal Coordination System since 1980, some states and municipalities have even requested that collection powers be returned to them, but if we They are going to take advantage of them so that, that is why the centralist inertias in our fiscal system are inevitable. When there is a void, someone fills it.
I can affirm that the SAT has been a good collector, but the others have to seek less dependency, greater collection efficiency and transparent and austere spending policies.
#meager #municipal #income