Getting cash USD out of Argentina

[gracielle]

.....The accountant was quite helpful but it's so different than the North American process where your lawyer and real estate agent do everything, you sign a few papers and they hand you the keys or transfer the money from their escrow account.

Amen to that....and thank you for your answer.

 

[ben]

I had no idea of the details @pjniki, thank you for this. But when reading @nikad writing “you should not have any problems”, my reaction was somewhere between an eyeroll and thinking “famous last words...”.

The thing is, though nearly every process and every tramite is absolutely ridiculous compared with how it’s done elsewhere, the people are the same people. People here are not more inclined to jump through 17 hoops to get anything done, than people elsewhere.

What happens instead? Exactly what you expect. People gravitate to cash. And then people complain about the rampant tax fraud and cheating.

There is, without doubt, a large amount of people that would be happy to do things en blanco even if it cost a little more, who would consider it worth it both to be on the right side of the law as well as the safety of going through the official system. But when things are as crazy as described above, the importance of being on the right side of the law is diminished. The legal process itself becomes a joke, to be used only as a cudgel against a bad landlord who almost certainly didn’t pay his taxes because that process is likely as messed up as everything else.

There are many things about Argentina I will miss.
But the casual “what problems?” followed by... lots and lots of problems, is not one of them.

PS I’ve previously linked to this piece about content piracy. It describes just about everything here to a T.

 

[Patagone]

I would check with your bank and make sure all of your ducks are in a row in terms of transferring money. The information we got was that if the bank accounts interior and exterior were in the identical names (you know how Argentina is a stickler for that stuff), then transferring from a property sale wouldn't be a big deal. The other requirement was a DNI with a local address. Everything depends on your relationship with your bank (and what they feel like that day ).

Have you already put the property on the market, or are just getting ready to do it? If you have an Argentinean bank account already, that will save you a lot of hassles with AFIP since you can pay their bills directly. That's where we ran into the most trouble. We signed the contract with the buyer in early June and then lost a month waiting for a new DNI for my partner since, even though he is a Canadian citizen, was born in Argentina. Then we lost 2 months haggling with my bank about why wire transfers to AFIP weren't showing up. I had to kick all of that stuff all the way up to the bank ombudsman to get answers. After all the hassles, we were finally able to close on Oct 31.

Also, if you can find a buyer with money outside the country and have it stipulated in the contract that the money will be paid from outside Argentina, then you will avoid a lot of these hassles. I would try to make that a preferred condition for the sale. I don't know what the market is like in Patagonia. My inlaws are planning to sell in Mar del Plata and Santa Clara. There's still a little life in Mar del Plata, but the real estate market in Santa Clara is completely moribund.

Yes, definitely I am trying to get things sorted out before we get an inches of cash handed over a badly cleaned table of the local mafia, err.. notary.
It's already on the market and I'd prefer to have it sold quickly. It's actually a good investment as it's in San Martin de los Andes, which is always busy in tourist seasons, in the centre of town and it's mostly being used as an AirBnB apartment (@camel stayed there once!) so for locals/foreigners with a foreign account, it's a good way to get rental income paid out in USD/EUR abroad.

My wife does have local bank accounts with Banco Patagonia and BBVA, but all foreign accounts are in my name. Maybe the best bet is BBVA as I have a credit card from them in my name connected to her account.

What AFIP bills did you have to pay after selling the apartment @pjniki ?

 

[Aloha Boy]

Argentina customs may be a concern, but US customs is fine. Just declare it.

Money and Other Monetary Instruments

Securing America's Borders

www.cbp.gov

https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/fin105_cmir.pdf?utm_source=search.usa.gov&utm_medium=search.usa.gov&utm_term=undefined&utm_content=undefined&utm_campaign=(not%20set)&gclid=undefined&dclid=undefined&GAID=477277934.1574118055

 

[buzz]

Does there not exist some type of property brokerage firm in Buenos Aires that handles this type of situation for you, and they just take a small percentage of the sale price for payment?

 

[pjniki]

Yes, definitely I am trying to get things sorted out before we get an inches of cash handed over a badly cleaned table of the local mafia, err.. notary.
It's already on the market and I'd prefer to have it sold quickly. It's actually a good investment as it's in San Martin de los Andes, which is always busy in tourist seasons, in the centre of town and it's mostly being used as an AirBnB apartment (@camel stayed there once!) so for locals/foreigners with a foreign account, it's a good way to get rental income paid out in USD/EUR abroad.

My wife does have local bank accounts with Banco Patagonia and BBVA, but all foreign accounts are in my name. Maybe the best bet is BBVA as I have a credit card from them in my name connected to her account.

What AFIP bills did you have to pay after selling the apartment @pjniki ?

In terms of AFIP, there was a smaller bill of around $400USD (converted to pesos) that was something like property taxes. I'd have to go look it up to tell you for sure. The much larger amount was a capital gains tax that we were forced to pay even though a friend had been living rent free in the apartment the whole time. If you are renting it as an AirBnB you should expect to have to pay the capital gains. Ours worked out to 5% of the value of the sale, $5,500. And we had to pay it to sell the apartment which means we had to pay it out of our line of credit as we didn't have that much cash sitting around. We needed to have a CUIT to pay these taxes. And because we were non-residents, we had to have an Argentinean start the process on our behalf. We had an accountant who specializes in expat transactions like this deal with AFIP through a power of attorney. She was the only person in the whole process who actually knew what she was doing and gave us good advice.

 

[Aloha Boy]

Does there not exist some type of property brokerage firm in Buenos Aires that handles this type of situation for you, and they just take a small percentage of the sale price for payment?

Yes, there are such services. They usually charge about 3.5% for the transaction. Talk to some local CPAs and attorneys and get rates.

 

[Patagone]

Argentina customs may be a concern, but US customs is fine. Just declare it.

Money and Other Monetary Instruments

Securing America's Borders

www.cbp.gov

https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/fin105_cmir.pdf?utm_source=search.usa.gov&utm_medium=search.usa.gov&utm_term=undefined&utm_content=undefined&utm_campaign=(not%20set)&gclid=undefined&dclid=undefined&GAID=477277934.1574118055

Yes, we actually have to go to the EU, but it's the same: you declare, you get to keep it and pay no taxes other than regular ones on wealth.
But getting ushered into a small room @ Ezeiza by some border people that want to check the $ and then replace it with fake ones is not my idea of a good day out.

 

[dilmah]

But getting ushered into a small room @ Ezeiza by some border people that want to check the $ and then replace it with fake ones is not my idea of a good day out.

So is transporting large sum of dollars OUT of Argentina is just a matter of inconvenience and lack of peace of mind (and associated risks) of showing money to Argentine customs? Or are there actual legal restrictions on transporting cash out of Argentina?

 

[pjniki]

So is transporting large sum of dollars OUT of Argentina is just a matter of inconvenience and lack of peace of mind (and associated risks) of showing money to Argentine customs? Or are there actual legal restrictions on transporting cash out of Argentina?

Our understanding was 10K USD per person. After all of our other hassles, and the huge cost in fees to do the closing, we weren't about to risk those numbers. Someone else stated the same numbers earlier in this thread. Plus 5k per child.

Our experience leaving Argentina was of complete indifference to the packet of $100 bills in each of our backpacks as they went through the X-ray machine. We probably could have taken more, but it's not something I was willing to test. As others stated for importing to home countries, we had no problem there as we had the escritura with us. We had to declare our money to Canada Customs because the limit here is 10k Canadian, and 10k USD is about $13,000 CDN.