The Supreme Court resolved this Wednesday the eighth case that Ricardo Salinas Pliego had opened against the Mexican tax system (SAT) in the High Court – in addition to the other seven concluded the previous week – with the same result. The tycoon must add 67.16 million pesos to the almost 50 billion that the Constitutional Court ordered him to pay last Thursday, a minor addendum that does not substantially change the amount of debts. This time, however, there was no unanimity in the plenary session, which saw three ministers vote against. The Constitutional Court also decided to postpone the review of the latest pending protection for a millionaire tax credit, which had an initial value of 645.76 million pesos. The two cases linked to this process, promoted by the Total Play company, present contradictory projects on the part of ministers Lenia Batres and Yasmín Esquivel, since the former proposes to go into the merits of the matter and the latter not to do so.
The trial resolved on Wednesday, which involves Nueva Elektra del Milenio and which corresponds to the 2012 fiscal year, breaks the trend followed by ministers last week. They then decided not to delve into the merits of the issues raised by Elektra, the company promoting the amparos, due to the absence of questions of constitutionality or because, even touching the issue, they lacked exceptional interest and, therefore, did not require a new ruling from the Court. This time, the project that resolved the revision of the amparo, whose presentation fell to Lenia Batres, went into the depths of some issues, contrary to the opinion of ministers Loretta Ortiz, Yasmín Esquivel and Irving Espinosa. The judges maintained the line of previous cases and argued that these are simply questions of legality and not constitutionality.
In this case, unlike the trials faced by the High Court last week, the amparo had been presented by the Ministry of the Treasury, which the entrepreneur had won in the first instance but lost in the second. Minister Batres proposed to revoke this latest ruling and to order the Collegiate Court to rule again on what the Court decided this morning.
The debate concerns whether tax authorities can carry out the relevant checks on companies that are part of a larger company under tax consolidation. This legal framework, in place from 1982 to 2013, allowed business conglomerates to consolidate the tax returns of all their companies to avoid having to pay high taxes on those that made profits while others generated losses. In this context, Salinas Pliego argued that the authorities could not, under that regime, supervise one of the companies that compose it – in this case, Nueva Elektra del Milenio – but only the one that contains it, which here would be Elektra.
Following the sentences of the lower courts, pronounced in different directions, the majority of ministers considered that this debate underlies a question of constitutionality of exceptional interest and, therefore, we must get to the bottom of the matter. The Plenary Assembly decided that the authorities can exercise their powers over companies controlled by a larger company and ordered the Collegiate Court to issue a new ruling taking into account this new jurisprudence, which implies the ratification of the 67 million fine.
The cases that the entrepreneur faces before the Supreme Court are of vital importance for the government of Claudia Sheinbaum who, following her predecessor, the Morenoist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has made the fight against large debtors one of its strong points. The president must raise revenue to finance the social programs that support her plan without resorting to a tax reform that she seeks to avoid at all costs. To get around the problem, it is closing the holes through which money that should already be entering public coffers continues to leak. There are two billion pesos blocked in the courts for disputed tax credits, an extraordinary loot of which the entrepreneur is part with a smaller percentage, but which nevertheless concentrates the greatest symbolic weight.
Salinas Pliego also confronts the Executive on a political level. The businessman jokes with the idea of fully entering this arena to directly confront the ruling party, whose disputes are broadcast in real time on networks and often end up in the president’s morning conferences. In addition to debts, what is also at stake in the public debate is whether or not to win the favor of citizens.
