Mexico City, Mexico — The federal government of Mexico says Internet company Totalplay owes more than 1.5 billion in unpaid taxes. This latest amount is added to the unpaid billions Ricardo Salinas Pliego is alleged to already owe the Tax Administration Service (SAT).
Ricardo Salinas Pliego is the owner of Totalplay who in December of 2022, was ordered by the Federal Court of Administrative Justice (TFJA) to pay 4.9 billion pesos in taxes for another of his companies, Grupo Elektra.
In a press conference, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reported on the case of tax evasion by company Totalplay. He says the company, owned by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, used a scheme of excessive deductions which was analyzed and resolved last week by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN).
“The ministers corroborated that the company omitted to pay taxes on five items, passed them off as losses and reported lower profits. After nine years of litigation, the company has failed to pay its taxes.
“Furthermore, this same scheme is presented in other Grupo Salinas companies, which is why the head of the Tax Administration Service (SAT), Antonio Martínez Dagnino, stated that there is a repeated abuse of accounting and legal strategies,” he said.
The SCJN confirmed that the taxpayer must correct more than 1.5 billion pesos that should not have been declared as tax losses and that the state has the right to collect.
This case is one of those pending in the Federal Judicial Branch. A historical debt of contributions of more than 30 billion pesos is quantified, mentioned the head of SAT.
“Totalplay did not provide complete information on their 2011 operation, mainly in the expenses category. SAT waited a year for the missing report. It was resolved and they informed the company in 2015 that it had to pay the income tax because the company reported 1.4 times more expenses than the total income it had obtained.
“In at least six areas the company did not prove that these expenses were incurred for the natural operation of the business,” Martínez Dagnino explained.
“We do not see names of individuals or companies. We only see the accounting operations that have these fiscal repercussions and that have to comply with the legislation,” Martínez Dagnino added.
During the conference, López Obrador said “we do not act in an authoritarian manner, we do not persecute anyone, but we do seek to ensure that there are no tax privileges because it is very unfair. How do workers in Mexico pay more income tax than business owners?
“There has to be justice. (…) All of these matters are in the judiciary, both in the Supreme Court and district courts, and there is a lot of money in dispute. It is no small thing.”
