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you are circumventing local laws and taxes while living in Argentina by using Bitcoin. TransferWise and Paypal may not work in Argentina (I'm pretty sure TW works but just doesn't offer you a favorable exchange rate), but you could still receive a normal bank transaction from abroad and sell your dollars cheaper as stipulated by the laws in the country you choose to live in.I can't receive a normal bank transaction without a bank account, and my experiences trying to open an Argentine bank account have been very disappointing, though admittedly I haven't tried in many years. https://pirlutravel.com/transferwise/ claims TransferWise no longer works in Argentina, since January 02020; I haven't tried it myself.
At present there are no local laws or taxes specifically on Bitcoin, so I'm not actually breaking them by receiving Bitcoin (though I am breaking laws by working for a living), but a charitable reading of your comment is that Bitcoin, like Western Union, is a loophole in the laws. And I think that's plausible.
> Not true. Illegal immigrants can be registered as autonomous workers
That's good news! But it contradicts what the clerk at AFIP told me last time I tried to get a CUIT; they told me I needed to regularize my immigration status first. Maybe the policy has changed since then. (Or maybe the clerk made a mistake—but mistakes made by clerks at AFIP still amount to law enforcement decisions.)
> Also, the VAT is not the lion's share of tax collection in Argentina, but income taxes.
So, it turns out that this is sort of false, but also sort of true, in a way I hadn't appreciated. https://www.cronista.com/economia-politica/Presupuesto-2021-... says the estimate for 02021 is that the IVA (VAT) is 28.9% of the federal budget, while the impuesto en ganancias (including both corporate income taxes and personal income tax) is 20.1%. It also has monotributo impositivo (the "autonomous worker fees" you mention) at 0.39%. So personal income tax stricto sensu is much smaller than the VAT.
(The vast majority of Argentine workers don't make enough to be subject to the income tax; with the recent legal reforms, as I understand it, the threshold has been raised to $150000 per month, excluding 90% of the workers in Argentina. Historically I would sometimes have made that much money, but it's been a long time.)
However, social-security contributions are 22.8% of the federal budget; in theory those contributions are not really "income taxes" in the sense that instead they fund your retirement, and when I had set up an Argentine company, we didn't have to pay them—we paid into a private retirement fund instead. But that legal option no longer exists, and unlike a private retirement fund, the government is not prudently investing those contributions in carefully managed investments that will ensure its solvency when I retire; it's just spending them. So in fact those contributions are income tax in all but name. And maybe that's what you meant. If you add social-security contributions together with the actual legal personal income tax, the sum is as big as IVA, or maybe even a little bigger.
If we're getting into real taxation versus de jure taxation, though, most of the government's budget comes from printing money, which in real terms is a tax on anyone holding pesos.
> I'm Argentinian. I simply chose to migrate away to a country without stupid taxes or laws rather than having an unfair advantage over my countrymen
I came here to help develop Argentina's economy with my skills and understand the reality of the world system. I have contributed to Argentina's human capital by teaching people my skills, by collaborating on projects, by giving talks, and most importantly through one-on-one mentorship; by exporting my services, I bring money into Argentina which is then ultimately used to pay down Argentina's foreign debt and for importation of urgently-needed goods and services. It's deeply unfortunate that Argentina's government puts obstacles in my way at every turn, but so far that hasn't stopped me, just injured me, and given me a much deeper understanding of the origins of poverty. But I am confident that every Argentine is better off, if only infinitesimally, because I am here—even if the government won't let me directly pay into the retirement fund como corresponde.
Even though I am living in poverty without access to adequate health care or banking and cannot visit my family, there are always people who will criticize me for having "unfair advantages" because they think I ought to be living in even worse straits. (It's a little unusual when the person criticizing me for those material advantages is in a much better material situation than I am, as in this case.) But I don't think worsening my situation is actually the way to improve the situation. Instead we should build civil society, human capital, and institutional infrastructure that are capable of lifting us out of the poverty trap our history has put us in.
You have probably made the best choice from a selfish perspective in leaving, but from the point of view of the Argentine project, I wish you were also here helping us out, because it's really hard to develop an intellectual community that can nurture nascent programmers when the best and brightest constantly move abroad. But who knows—even if you aren't teaching people in Argentina to program, maybe you're bringing more money into the country (via family remittances) than I am? (One of the Argentines I mentored is doing so.)
If so, what money transfer service do you use?