“TC ruling will force large firms to pay back taxes” – 27 September 2020

On 22 September the Constitutional Tribunal voted four to two to uphold the constitutionality of a resolution that upheld the principle of debts to the SUNAT not being time limited. The Law Association (Colegio de Abogados) in La Libertad region had sought to prevent SUNAT from collecting debts totalling 9.3 billion soles (US$1=3.5 soles) owed by some of Peru’s largest firms. Of these, 26 are claiming that the tax demands were time limited…The salience of such massive debts to the state comes, of course, at a time when the Covid-19 lockdown has greatly reduced the amount of tax revenue entering the Treasury while significantly increasing public spending on payments to sustain the poor economically…Many of the companies with large debts to SUNAT come from the mining sector. Heading the list is Buenaventura (2 billion soles) whose president is Roque Benavides, past president of Confiep. Others include Antapaccay (728 million soles) [part of Glencore], Las Bambas (698 million) [part of MMG, part of China Minmetals], Cerro Verde (542 million) [part of Freeport-McMoRan], Volcan (161 million) [part of Glencore] and Antamina (119 million) [Joint venture BHP, Glencore, Teck Resources and Mitsubishi]. The list also includes construction companies under investigation within Lava Jato, including Graña y Montero (62 million soles), Odebrecht (62 million) and Queiroz Galvão ((1 million). Others include Telefónica (359 million), Latam Airlines (351 million) and Scotiabank (1.1 billion)…