While Argentines juggle to make ends meet, the judicial corporation finds ways to preserve its privileges. This week, Federal Prosecutor General José Luis Agüero Iturbe received a ruling exempting him from paying income tax, despite having expressed support in his Senate public hearing for judicial officials paying the withholding. As soon as he took office, he resorted to the courts with a constitutional challenge.
According to data from the Council of the Judiciary, as of Tuesday, 94.65% of magistrates and judicial officials did not pay income tax. With the ruling in favor of Agüero Iturbe, that percentage rose to 94.66%. The prosecutor receives a monthly salary of 11 million pesos.
Agüero Iturbe was appointed Deputy Prosecutor General of the Attorney General’s Office on June 14, 2018. Almost immediately, he filed a declaratory action of unconstitutionality. His excuse: despite having expressed support for paying income tax at the Senate Agreements meeting on May 9, 2018, he had not «signed any paper» committing not to litigate.
Judge Pablo Cayssials — one of the «huemules» who participated in the trip to the mansion of British magnate Joe Lewis in Lago Escondido — granted the lawsuit in October 2023. Curiously, on January 30 of that year, Agüero Iturbe ruled that the case regarding the Lago Escondido trip be transferred from the Bariloche court to Comodoro Py. Coincidences or causalities.
Now, Chamber I of the National Federal Court of Appeals in Administrative Litigation ratified the exemption, with the votes of judges Rodolfo Eduardo Facio and Liliana María Heiland. They considered it «discriminatory salary treatment» to charge Agüero Iturbe for having assumed office after January 1, 2017, the cutoff date set by Law 27.346 enacted in 2016.
Another curiosity: Judge Heiland also defended her nomination at the Senate hearing on May 9, 2018, just minutes before the current Prosecutor General. «For many years I have been thinking that judges should pay income tax, that there is no opposition between Article 110 of the Constitution and Article 16, that they can be perfectly reconciled, and that today the country needs it. And the real and absolute truth is that today there is a law that has not been challenged in its constitutionality, which is in force,» Heiland stated. The law remains the same. What seems to have changed is Heiland’s conviction.
Agüero Iturbe is not a minor figure in the Comodoro Py scheme. He is the sole prosecutor before the Federal Chamber and, therefore, holds the key to deciding whether to uphold or drop appeals from first-instance prosecutors against judges’ rulings. He is also responsible for deciding whether to appeal or validate the Chamber’s resolutions.
At the same Agreements meeting, Nada Flores Vega defended her nomination, later appointed judge of the Federal Oral Court 3 of San Martín. «It is defined by law, there is no doubt that any person who wants to access the judiciary complies with the law. I believe that all judges must pay income tax,» she told the senators. When she took office, with the sponsorship of lawyer Rodolfo Barra — former Treasury Attorney for Javier Milei and former Minister of Justice under Carlos Menem — she filed a declaratory action of unconstitutionality against Law 27.346, arguing that she had been appointed after 2017 because her competition was delayed. In September 2023, Judge Martina Forns granted the lawsuit and issued a ruling in favor of Flores Vega. Just in case, on March 4 of this year, the judge adhered to the simplified income tax regime created by the Tax Innocence Law.
In Argentina, according to the 2023 Budget project, the exemption from income tax payment represents 0.16% of GDP. Currently, it is equivalent to 1.2 trillion pesos annually that the State does not collect.
By a Supreme Court resolution, judges, prosecutors, officials, and employees do not pay income tax. In 2016, Congress established that magistrates appointed after January 1, 2017, would begin to pay the tax. Immediately, the Association of Magistrates and Officials of the National Justice requested that the word «appointment» be interpreted as «entry into the National Judiciary» — a maneuver to shield those already in the system — and filed an injunction to suspend the application of the law.
That filing was endorsed in November 2017 by Judge Esteban Furnari, confirmed by the Chamber, and reached the Supreme Court, which decided to revoke the injunction in November 2018 but did not rule on the merits. At that time, the highest court argued that «magistrates honored with a position that imposes such a high mission should be the first citizens called to fully comply with the law.» Under that criterion, each promotion in the judicial career would be counted as a new appointment and would pay income tax.
The Frente de Todos government attempted to modify Article 82 of the Income Tax Law during the debate on the 2023 Budget. It did so with the intention of establishing that all members of the Judiciary pay the tax, regardless of the date of their appointment. The initiative did not prosper and was rejected in the Chamber of Deputies during the session of October 25, 2022, with 134 votes against. The negative votes were cast by the PRO, the Civic Coalition, the UCR, Radical Evolution, and the Federal Interbloc. But representatives of the Left and union deputies of the then-ruling party also voted against on behalf of judicial workers. At that time, Javier Milei and Victoria Villarruel were deputies but decided to leave the chamber and not vote, as did Margarita Stolbizer.
Para mí esto huele a mafia judicial de mierda. El fiscal chorro promete pagar Ganancias y se manda un amparo, mientras al laburante le rompen el orto con impuestazos. Yo creo que la corporación se protege entre ellos, son unos vendepatria hipócritas.
Para mí este Agüero Iturbe es un verso de la casta chorra, promete pagar Ganancias y después se ampara. La Justicia forra protegiéndose entre ellos mientras los laburantes como uno pagamos hasta el aire. Yo creo que hay que dinamitar el Consejo de la Magistratura, viva la libertad carajo.