The huachicol that cannot be seen (but that costs us a fortune)
It seems that at the 4T party there is a guest who did not pay for his cover and is sucking up the entire open bar. It turns out that Morena’s vice coordinator in the Chamber of Deputies, Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar, has just dropped the juiciest gossip of the season: he is going to ask the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to create a special commission to investigate the fiscal huachicol and false billing. Basically, the financial equivalent of getting a made-up traffic ticket, but on a national scale and with scary zeros.
In what could be the most dramatic episode of the political soap opera of the year, Ramírez Cuéllar went out at a press conference – the favorite format to drop bombs – to declare that these are two big problems that are draining the finances of the federal government. His proposal is to make a formal request to the attorney general so that, using the powers given to him by article 19 of the Law of the Attorney General, a special commission is set up that is dedicated to monitoring and developing more vigorously the investigations against these crimes. In other words, he wants to create the anti-tax cheat squad, because apparently the current system has more leaks than a sieve.
The plot twist: Morena vs Morena
And this is where the script gets good. Because Ramírez Cuéllar’s statements are like that meme of Spider-Man pointing at himself, but in real life and in a deputy’s suit. It turns out that they directly contradict the national president of Morena, Luisa María Alcalde, who on September 26 had declared with all the calm in the world that the fiscal huachicol “was over” in the last six-year term. Yes, you read that right: according to her, this problem was a thing of the past, like the cassette or Myspace.
The Morenista leader even got technical, clarifying that what they now call fiscal huachicol is actually fuel smuggling that comes from abroad, and that pipeline theft – the classic huachicol – practically ended with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. A very beautiful narrative, worthy of a happy ending… until the harsh reality arrived with hard data.
Because Ramírez Cuéllar, in an act of bravery or pure political unconsciousness, released the numbers that no one wanted to hear: during the López Obrador administration, it is estimated that the fiscal diesel huachicol reached an average of 43.7 thousand barrels per day. To give you an idea, that is equivalent to 10% of national apparent consumption. It’s as if for every 10 beers you pay for at a club, one is being drunk by a ghost who didn’t pay a cent.
But wait, there’s more. The tax loss derived from these evasion practices amounted to 4.6 billion dollars due to VAT and IEPS evasion. And if we add the physical huachicol with the fiscal one, the total impact on Pemex and the public treasury was calculated at more than 28,200 million dollars. Figures that are so astronomical that it hurts to even think about them, and that make the theft of your wallet on the subway seem like a bad joke.
False billing, meanwhile, is the other monster under the bed. It is that creative practice where some companies – those that are not afraid of anything – issue tax receipts for operations that never existed, creating a black hole in the public coffers where the money that should be financing schools, hospitals and even the social programs that so much is talked about disappears. It is the art of making money out of thin air, but in its most criminal and least magical version.
The irony of all this is that we are talking about a party that came to power under the banner of republican austerity and the fight against corruption. Seeing how one of their own legislators now has to request a special commission to investigate millionaire embezzlements within their own government has a level of contradiction that even the screenwriters of House of Cards would find exaggerated. It’s the political equivalent of your nutritionist recommending a diet based on pizza and beer.
Beyond political gossip, what is truly worrying is the real impact that these practices have on the country’s economy. Every peso that is evaded in taxes is a peso that does not reach the services that we all use. It’s like making a cow among everyone for the party, and the one who earns the most disappears when it’s time to pay. The tax huachicol is not a victimless crime: its victims are all of us who do pay taxes and hope that that money is used well.
Ramírez Cuéllar’s request, although uncomfortable for his own party, is a tacit recognition that the problem exists and is serious. The creation of a special commission could be the first step to uncover a fiscal sewer that has been operating with impunity for years. The real challenge will be to see if this initiative advances or if it ends up buried in the cemetery of good political intentions, where so many other promises of transparency lie.
Meanwhile, formal taxpayers are still here, paying our taxes on time in the hope that one day these practices will disappear and our money will really be used for what it should be used for. Because at the end of the day, the fight against tax evasion is not a matter of partisan colors, but of common sense and basic justice.
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