The Ministry of Finance announced the implementation of a mandatory registration of telephone numbers associated with payment platforms, with the purpose of strengthening user identification and improving the traceability of transactions carried out through these means. The authorities state, wisely in my opinion, that the measure is part of the actions aimed at strengthening tax control mechanisms and the quality of information available to the Administration.
A few months ago, the following was read in this same column: “We are facing a clear example of how technological tools that facilitate citizens' lives — and that have promoted formalization and financial inclusion — must coexist with the unavoidable obligation to comply with tax laws. The digitalization of payments cannot become a loophole for evasion, nor can tax control become an obstacle that discourages their use."
Today, with this new registration requirement, the DGT (Tax Administration) will find out — because taxpayers themselves will tell it — which taxpayers use SINPE as a means of conducting their business transactions. Knowing that, Hacienda will turn to the Central Bank and request the transactions carried out from that number, and it will then fall to the BCCR to determine whether the requested information is protected by banking secrecy or whether, on the contrary, it can be provided without issue.
The question, then, is what information the DGT will request from the Central Bank. If it concerns the number of transactions that a given phone number, associated with a given person, carries out over, say, a month, I don't see how such information could be denied to the tax authority. But if it concerns the amounts or account balances, it most likely could be.
Is that, then, the solution to the problem I raised in my last column on this topic? SINPE should have two channels: one for merchants and businesses. If customers want to pay via SINPE, they should be able to do so — but by simplifying the transaction using models like the one currently used in India, through a QR code that is scanned at the point of sale and automatically deducts the amount from the customer's account, sending the payment to the merchant's account in microseconds, without the need to type in phone numbers. And another SINPE for money transfers that are not commercial but personal. That one, limiting amounts per phone, per account, and per person, with risk profiles, and free of charge. The other should resemble, as closely as possible, paying with a credit card — except this time it is debit — and it should be simpler, cheaper for merchants, and more controllable: what the DGT wants, what the economy needs, and what the Central Bank has shown itself capable of developing.
What we cannot do is abandon financial inclusion for the sake of fiscal control, nor allow evasion under the banner of financial inclusion. Technology, applied massively in countries like India or Brazil, makes this possible and enhances it.
Francisco Villalobos, Former Director General of Taxation.