Sebastian Fest Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Updated Saturday, March 16, 2024-23:53

The Argentine president,

Javier Milei,

expressed his emphatic support for something unlikely to be expected from a head of state:

a tax rebellion.

The objective?

The Peronist governor of the province of Buenos Aires,

Axel Kicillof.

"It's almost biblical:

a thief who steals from another thief has a hundred years of forgiveness.

Kicillof has to reduce spending," Milei said this Saturday during an interview on "Radio Miter."


That a sitting president calls not to pay taxes may sound strange to say the least, but it is consistent with the minarchism that Milei professes, a minimal State.

And if it were up to him, there would be no State,

convinced that it is a machine for stealing and swindling, to such an extent that during the election campaign he said that between the mafia and the State he is left with the mafia: "Because the mafia has codes, the mafia competes".

In recent weeks, Kicillof decided to increase various taxes in the province of Buenos Aires, the richest and most populated in the country,

with jumps of up to 300 percent between 2023 and 2024.

The increases focused on taxes on automobile license plates, real estate assets, urban built assets and rural land.

They affect, above all, an anti-Peronist electoral base.

Given the complaints of many Buenos Aires residents, the libertarian deputy

José Luis Espert,

very close to Milei and resident in Buenos Aires, said that he will not pay those taxes.

"The governor has generated a phenomenal tax and it's not enough for him either. Is Kicillof a vampire in a blood bank with money? Does he chew money?" mocked Espert, who is none other than the president of the Budget and Budget Commission. Treasury of the Chamber of Deputies.

"It is a fiscal rebellion with common sense,"

he added.

Milei supported Espert's idea and criticized Kicillof, former Economy Minister of Cristina Kirchner: "What he is doing is expropriatory."

"Kicillof has to lower spending, not increase taxes. (What) happens (is) that he has the same conceptual defects as (former Minister of Economy)

Martín Guzmán.

For them the adjustment is whether or not spending is touched public. But someone has to pay the taxes."

"They end up sinking the economy,"

insisted Milei, who hates Keynesianism, an economic vision to which Kicillof is related.