After a 13-year bureaucratic process, the US Senate has sent a draft agreement between Chile and the United States into law that avoids “double taxation” for companies from the northern country and Chilean companies with business in both countries.
After a 13-year bureaucratic process, the US Senate has sent a draft agreement between Chile and the United States into law that avoids “double taxation” for companies from the northern country and Chilean companies with business in both countries.
In this way, senior businessmen in the countries of destination for investments are exempted from taxes to encourage the inflow of capital.. The international press is already highlighting that this agreement will generate a huge boost for North American companies seeking to “invest” in the loot of lithium, a key metal in the technological race in which the superpowers have embarked on intensifying confrontation. With China, and that demand for the metal has skyrocketed to build batteries and high-tech devices.
The current government celebrated the progress of the agreement, which must be ratified again by the Chilean Congress for promulgation, arguing that the agreement would “reduce tax evasion” by forcing signatory states to share tax information for companies with operations in both jurisdictions.
Generally, it prevents the corporation from paying full taxes on the income it receives in its country of origin and in the jurisdiction where its investments are located. Through various provisions, it reduces this pressure, creating an incentive for the “destination” country to receive more investment.
However, far from being beneficial, this agreement facilitates the extraction and plundering of our natural resources at the hands of the big imperialist transnational corporations. As indicated by Rosana Costa, the current President of the Central Bank, when she was Director of the Budget, this agreement by reducing interest taxes from 35% to 10% – with an implementation period in which they will be reduced to 15% – will translate into the cost of the public treasury of our country $131 million.
This gift to the United States was designed by our country’s loyal servants: the former and the right party chiefs. At the beginning of the negotiation during the government of Eduardo Fray Ruiz Tagle, Lagos, Bachelet and Pinera gave all their energies to ensure the signing of this new agreement of surrender and plunder of the United States. Finally, it will be up to the Boric government, once again, to carry on the legacy of its predecessors and put the final signature on this new capitulation that will allow the troubled national sovereign to kneel until he becomes a handful of North American businessmen. The richest, the cost of poverty and the destruction of our land.
The path of resignation of the government of approval of dignity and resignation on the part of business tycoons and transnational corporations, only deepens the vulnerability to which the working class is relegated in favor of a handful of capitalists.
It is necessary to build a left that is not afraid of confronting big business and imperialism, striving to reverse this path of resignation and to resume the struggle for the nationalization of all our natural resources under the management of the workers, so that the benefits. Distribute them en masse and avoid a new climate catastrophe with its consequences for the inhabitants of our lands.