Rentista Visa

[Alby]

Good luck. Remember, unless a specialist lawyer advises you that your idea will definitely NOT work, the only opinion about your idea that will ever count will be that of the person inside Migraciones who ultimately assesses your application. And even if you start, now on your own, without a lawyer's help, if my experience with a fairly simple Rentista application is any guide, you could be up to two years off getting your documentation in front of that person to learn the answer.

 

[petergardiner10]

The way it was working 12 months ago (with the newly introduced electronic lodgement system), was as follows:

1) Obtain all the documents needed from your home country that others have described above, which does NOT mean opening a bank account in Argentina, because, of course, that is impossible until you have concluded the process successfully and have your residency.

2) Once in Argentina, but before uploading the documents to the system, go to an ATM and withdraw an amount from the overseas bank account where the income from you trust or rental property is deposited.

3) Retain the ATM receipt and take a photograph of it.

4) The photograph of the receipt is one of the documents you upload (the system has a specific space for it).

You have now completed the loop. You have an income stream from an overseas source (the documents you bring from your home country and upload, once apostilled there and translated here, demonstrate this). You have evidence that this income reaches an overseas bank in the necessary amount (the documents you bring from your home country and upload, once apostilled there and translated here, must include several months of bank statements that show the money going in regularly). You have evidence (in the form of the photographed ATM receipt) that you can withdraw money from that overseas account here in Argentina.

A few weeks after lodging all the documents online, you will get an email inviting you to come into Migrations in person (the very next morning) to present all the original documents. If all goes well, they will issue the Precaria that day. If that Precaria ever turns into an actual residency, you will then be able to open your local bank account and started transferring the money from your overseas account into that local account, and thus comply with the conditions of the Rentista residency.

However, you will never get to the last step in the process. As others have said, nobody at Migraciones has the fainted idea about the Rentista category. They will tell you anything, and it will almost certainly be wrong. They will just keep reissuing your Precaria every 90 days and even if you put in a request to expedite the tramite, it will continue to go unattended. After a while, you will realize that they don’t know what to do with your documentation, but that it really doesn't matter; as long as they keep renewing your Precaria, you are living happily in Argentina.

The only catch is that in theory you can renew the Precaria every 90 days from the comfort of your home by pressing a button on the system. That, unfortunately, only works 50% of the time. If, 10 days after you pressed the button, the system still hasn’t generated the new Precaria, you will have to join the queue at Migraciones from 5 am to have them do it manually in building C. Go on the 11th calendar day; go any earlier and your 3 hours of queuing in the cold will have been in vain.

Bear in mind too, that since the recent changes to the taxation legislation, the asset overseas that you use to generate your income is, technically, subject to the annual wealth tax, at rate that could reach as high as 2.25%. If you are a risk taker, listen to those who argue that (i) AFIP aren’t interested in foreigners, and/or (ii) aren’t equipped to trace foreigners’ wealth, and/or (iii) that even though the “overseas domicile” loophole has been closed, a smart lawyer will be able to convince a judge in the future that it is still open. If you are not a risk taker, think very carefully about declaring an asset to one part of government (Migraciones), who could be asked to report it any time in the future to another part (AFIP—the tax collectors).

'hi, given if you withdraw money from a foreign bank here it charges you at the official rate, can I withdraw it from a my girlfriends account and upload it'?

 

[Bajo_cero2]

What Bajo_Cero2 wrote actually indicates is that the "Central Bank" requires an individual to have permanent residency to open a bank account, not that a having a bank account is a requirement for permanent residency.

The reason I can decipher his posts is that I have been studying Rublish for over ten years.

Question of the day: If you beat the "L"out of Rublish, what do you get?

PS: That's just a joke!

Are you referring to Banco Nacion?

Central Bank is the authority over all banks:

 

[Bajo_cero2]

I know someone here who just got pensionado permanent residency and had never had a bank account here.

That's the point. It is impossible to get a bank account unless they break the law.

 

[Alby]

'hi, given if you withdraw money from a foreign bank here it charges you at the official rate, can I withdraw it from a my girlfriends account and upload it'?

Just withdraw a small amount. Say the equivalent of U$30. From your account. Don't try and be too fancy, especially as this is the simplest part of an otherwise almost impossible process.

 

[petergardiner10]

Just withdraw a small amount. Say the equivalent of U$30. From your account. Don't try and be too fancy, especially as this is the simplest part of an otherwise almost impossible process.

ok thanks, will try this.

 

[Alby]

But read again the list you have referenced above. The whole point of the exercise is not to demonstrate that you can withdraw funds from an ATM located in Argentina (for example, your girlfriend's); it is to demonstrate that you can withdraw funds at an ATM located in Argentina from the bank account in your name (in your home country) which receives the income that comes from the asset. You have to obtain and upload (translated) all this documentation (and much more besides): proof of your ownership of the income-generating asset; bank statements in your name showing that income arriving on a regular basis into your bank: the details of the card you plan to use to extract the money from that bank at an ATM in Argentina, and, finally, the ATM slip that provides evidence of you successfully performing this action. The girlfriend account idea doesn't fly at all. It misses the point of the whole exercise.

 

[petergardiner10]

hi thanks. yes it's difficult though as you can't get a bank account in your name unless you have a precaria, to get a precaria I need to upload the above. If i just withdraw money on my UK bank card now it will just give me a receipt saying X pesos, it won't have my name on it anyway.

 

[steveinbsas]

If i just withdraw money on my UK bank card now it will just give me a receipt saying X pesos, it won't have my name on it anyway.

The requested bank statements with your name on them will show the same date and amount of the ATM withdrawal on the receipt and you can attach the appropriate ATM receipts to the monthly statements (as well as make photocopies of multiple ATM receipts on single pages).

PS: I think you will have to provide evidence of the ATM withdrawals for at least the previous two months when submitting your application to migraciones.

 

[Alby]

I don't think that's quite right. At least it wasn't two years ago at the point the electronic system had just appeared. Things may be different now, but when I did it the system only allowed you to upload a single ATM receipt.

It is a logistic problem more than anything. The bank statements (showing the asset income going in) are part of the documentation you need to bring with you into the country. So you have to print them before you arrive in the country and have them apostilled in your home country. Performing an ATM withdrawal to obtain the ATM slip showing you can access the bank funds in Argentina, is a step you can only take from inside the country (i.e., once you have already arrived with your now apostilled and historic bank statements).

How do Migraciones know that the ATM receipt shows the money coming out of the same bank account that you have uploaded statements from? The answer, I would say, is that they don't. And they probably don't really care. When I did this, the ATM slip helpfully showed the last 4 digits of the card, which corresponds to the last four digits that I had stated on my (apostilled, translated) covering letter was the card I would use to access the funds. So, whilst there is no evidence that the $30-equivalent pesos withdrawal actually came from the account, as long as the ATM cooperates and provides sufficient detail of the card number, there is at least evidence that you are using the card you said you intended to use, and that this card will get you access to money whilst you are in Argentina waiting for Migraciones to assess your application.

This category of residency gives Migraciones so much fat to chew over (pages and pages of detailed documentation that is mostly beyond their comprehension) for months and months and even years, that the small detail of establishing a clear link from your $30 withdrawal to the account you nominated is unimportant to them. That detail will be the 1000th cut your application will die by if they haven't found a way to put it out of its misery with any one of the preceding 999.

Relatedly, at the time I did this, I was told to include the details of the ATM card I planned to use, on the covering letter (one of the documents apostilled and later translated). If that still applies, you need to decide which card you are going to use before you leave home and before you write your covering letter and have it apostilled. And, if I was nervous about putting the card details in such a letter back then, you should be terrified of doing so now, given the recent hack of Migraciones. So do what I did: just put the name of the bank, eight Xs and then the last four digits.

Finally, think about this: what happens if the card you nominated on your documentation doesn't actually work when you get here? Like snakes and ladders, at the very last step to reach the end of the game you find yourself back at the start. Your apostilled (at home) and translated (here) covering letter is now incorrect: the card it says works for the account you nominated will not in fact do so. A solution has to be found and the letter rewritten, re-apostilled, and re-translated. The point being that there are so many critical failure points (the ATM example is just one) in applying under this category that you really have to plan this out in advance and be meticulous at every point of the plan's execution. If you don't have the time or the organizational and contingency planning skills, employ a lawyer. Or do that anyway, regardless of your skills. Or find another category altogether.