On April 10th, 2025, Decree 31-2024, the Law for the Integration of the Primary and Agricultural Production Sector, will come into force. In addition to introducing simplifications and tax benefits for these sectors, it also includes some changes that may affect other types of companies and taxpayers. These are the most noteworthy:
- Article 15 of the Decree reforms Article 45 of the Value Added Tax (VAT) Law, which refers to the Small Taxpayer Regime. Specifically, it raises the taxation limit for individuals or legal entities to be able to adopt the Small Taxpayer Regime (Pequeño Contribuyente). Now those who sell goods or provide services for an annual amount of up to 125 times the minimum wage can be eligible for this regime. Previously the maximum was Q150,000 (US$19,410) a year, and starting in April of this year, the amount will rise to around Q 465,000 (US$60,171).
- Article 19 amends article 120 of the Tax Code, which refers to the registration of taxpayers and responsible parties. The most significant change affects companies, as they must specify in the Unified Tax Regime (RTU) the “full names and surnames, company name or corporate name of the shareholders or partners of the legal entity and their percentage of participation in the capital of the latter, where appropriate, through the means made available to them for this purpose by the Tax Administration”.
- In this sense, Erick Echeverría, tax collection intendent of the Superintendency of Tax Administration (SAT), explained in an interview with Prensa Libre, that “the field or space to enter this new information already exists in the RTU format, although at the moment it is not mandatory to fill it in, however, it will be from the moment the law comes into force for the regimes mentioned in decree 31-2024 and gives the SAT the power to require it from the rest of the companies”.
- According to Decree 31-2024, and in Echeverría's words, in principle it would only apply to companies engaged in the production and marketing of agricultural products and handicrafts produced in Guatemala, destined for supermarkets, cantonal and municipal markets, collection centers and restaurants, whose gross sales do not exceed three thousand five hundred (3,500) times the current monthly minimum wage for the non-agricultural sector. This means around Q13 million (US$1.68 million) by 2025.
If you have any questions about the new requirements or need more information, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Update (May 2 at 10:00 a.m.): On April 30, 2025, the Constitutional Court (CC) ruled on several constitutional challenges and ordered the provisional suspension of portions of Articles 19 and 21 that refer to issues such as the obligation to provide information on partners or shareholders or the possibility of regularizing undeclared income by paying 5% of the value without the need for supporting documents. You can read the full press release here.
