Martina Jaureguy President Javier Milei fired Florencia Misrahi from her role as head of Argentina’s ARCA tax agency on Saturday after it created a specific tax category for streamers, influencers and other digital content creators, the president’s communications team announced in a statement on X.
Taxation specialists point out that the change did not create a new levy because such workers were already required to declare and pay tax on their income. Misrahi, meanwhile, had been under pressure from Milei to cut her salary to bring it in line with what government ministers earn.
Salaries at the tax bureau, which was known as AFIP under its previous form until October, are linked to revenues. That meant Misrahi was reportedly earning as much as AR$32 million (US$30,917 at the official rate, US$30,505 at the MEP rate) per month.
The communiqué says Misrahi and two of her officials were dismissed over “differences in the direction of the government.” It went on to explain that the decision to “modify the tax regime” for streamers and influencers was taken without consultation and would be immediately reversed.
Misrahi’s departure was made official in a decree published Monday in Argentina’s Official Gazette, in which the new head of ARCA, Juan Pazo, was also appointed.
Pazo had previously been in charge of the Economy Ministry’s Production Coordination Secretariat since Milei took office. He was initially announced as the new International Economic Relations Secretary at the Foreign Ministry, after Milei fired Diana Mondino and her top diplomats and officials. However, he was never formally appointed to the post.
That position will now go to Pablo Quirno, who was previously Argentina’s finance secretary.
“This government will not persecute new digital businesses, and reaffirms its commitment to work in a simplified tax regime,” the statement said. “The answer to the persistent fiscal deficit that the Argentine Republic has suffered for decades does not lie in seeking new forms of tax collection, but in lowering public spending.”
The resolution Misrahi was fired for does not create a tax regime for content creators, as the government’s communiqué implies. Instead, it created new categories for some digital economic activities within an existing tax regime. Content creators were already required to pay taxes — the difference was that their line of work was not specified in their tax documentation.
ARCA’s resolution 5,607, published in the Official Gazette on November 29, updated the categories included in its Economic Activities Classifier to include delivery app workers, cryptocurrency mining and holding, web and app development, and digital content creation. The latter includes influencers, youtubers, bloggers and other workers who earn a living producing online content.
The change does not impose a new tax on individuals who perform such jobs. It simply allows them to categorize their work more precisely in Argentina’s taxation system for self-employed people.
When the government revokes the categories created by Misrahi, streamers, people who mine cryptocurrency, delivery app workers, and others included in Misrahi’s resolution will have to continue paying taxes under the “not previously classified” category.
“Influencers and streamers had to pay tax like any other taxpayer who undertakes taxable activities,” said SDC Asesores Tributarios CEO Sebastián M. Domínguez. The November 29 ARCA resolution only added new activity categories so that content creators “could declare a specific activity, instead of choosing the ‘not previously classified’ personal services category,” he said.
“They should have already been paying taxes in one of the existing categories,” Domínguez added.
ARCA declined to comment on the issue.
