Lawyer. Employment advisor of companies and chambers of business. Academic Counselor for Libertad y Progreso.
CRONISTA – At the edge of the abyss came widespread help to pay the wages of operating workers or for subsidized suspensions of those who are inoperative.
The subsidy is channeled directly to the bank account of each worker’s wages through their CBU and represents 50% of the net salary of February 2020 with a minimum of a Minimum Living and Mobile Salary (SMVM: $ 16,875) and a cap two SMVMs ($ 33,750). This compensatory allowance will be considered on account of the payment of remuneration or the cash allowance provided for in article 223 bis of the Labor Contract Law.
Therefore, employers must pay the balance until they complete the remuneration of those who receive it in a normal and habitual way, and must also be deducted from the non-remunerative allocation of workers suspended through art. 223 bis (LCT)
In other words, if a worker had a net salary of $ 50,000 in February 2020, he will receive $ 25,000, an amount that is not reached by the floor or the ceiling. On the other hand, if the worker had a salary of $ 80,000, he will receive the cap of $ 33,750 because 50% exceeds it. In turn, if you have an income of $ 25,000, you will charge an SMVM of $ 16,875 since 50% is less than the floor.
Everything will be financed with monetary issuance, since the tax and social security collection, like the turnover of companies, fell into an abyss and definitively sank GDP and increased the fiscal deficit to unimaginable levels.
In other words, the devastating effects of the pandemic were raised, and with it, a battery of resources was approved to assist companies that are victims of the recession forced by the pandemic.
This tool, fundamental for the subsistence of companies, was established in DNU 376/2020, the Emergency Assistance Program for Work and Production (ATP) within Law 27,541, which decreed the sanitary emergency and DNU 260/2020, which declared the quarantine that with the DNU 297/20 that established the “social, preventive and compulsory isolation” during the period from March 20 now extended until May 24, 2020.
The Emergency Assistance Program for Work and Production (ATP) deployed the following instruments:
- The postponement or reduction of up to NINETY FIVE PERCENT (95%) of the payment of employer contributions to the Argentine Integrated Social Security System;
- The aforementioned complementary salary is created, paid by the National State for male and female workers in a relationship of dependency on the private sector without refund;
- The creation of Zero Rate credits for people adhering to the Simplified Scheme for Small Taxpayers and for self-employed workers under the conditions established by the HEAD OF MINISTER’S CABINET and the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, within the framework of their respective competencies, with subsidy of ONE HUNDRED PERCENT (100%) of the total financial cost;
- In turn, the comprehensive unemployment benefit system: workers who meet the requirements set forth in Laws Nros. 24,013 and 25,371 will access an economic unemployment benefit in accordance with the provisions of DNU 376-2020.
Strictly speaking, nobody is oblivious to the crisis, and in fact, it was demonstrated that there are companies included in essential services whose turnover fell to zero, and therefore, without distinction, employers do not have the income to meet their essential obligations. Consider the closure or paralysis of small establishments and SMEs, and as an example we have the food industry with candy manufacturers, in the transport of the oil industry that is paralyzed, in which they transport food to The most extreme points of the country that return with an empty truck doubling the cost, the airlines and those that provide services to them, tourism and all its services, hotel chains, cafes, restaurants or gastronomic venues, others. It is enough to mention Despegar.com whose value and activity have also been reduced to zero.
To all the above, we must add the heavy backpack that all dragged by the stagflation, and the almost total breakdown of the payment chain.
Subsidies and other tools will run through April and May, and should be the pre-announcement of what will come in June and July, where the difficulties will increase, since it is not about subsistence but relaunching under extreme conditions.
We will no longer have time for fluctuations, and we will have to have a large and medium-term battery that allows us to consolidate a launch pad. Zero-rate loans with grace periods, financing the purchase of capital goods with new technologies, and rebuilding the social and middle-class fabric will be priorities.
The Executive Branch, based on recent experience, should anticipate in the coming days what will be the resources and means that will be generated to face the departure, launch and reconstruction of value creators, those who pay taxes, and of those who contribute to growth, which are only and only companies.
