Chile: Commission services as exports

Loreto Pelegrí	Bernardita Parodi

On October 26 2016, Law No. 20,956 was published in the Official Gazette. The purpose of this law is to encourage Chilean productivity. As such, it introduced a series of measures aiming to achieve this target.

Increasing the export of Chilean services to abroad is one of the goals of this law, for which it broadened the VAT exemption that benefits these services contained in Article 12(E)(16) of the VAT Law, which provides this VAT exemption for services that have been defined as export services by the Chilean Customs Authority, among the establishment of other requirements and control rules.

In this context, the Chilean Customs Authority, by means of Resolution N° 2,511 of 2007 that complies with Article 12(E)(16) of the Chilean VAT Law, among other things, provided that services rendered by commission agents could not qualify as export services. However, in the context of Law No. 20,956 that encourages the export of services, the National Customs Authority issued Resolution No. 990 on February 9 2017, which modifies Resolution No. 2511 of 2007, with the aim of being in line with the objectives of Law No. 20,956.

Due to the above, Resolution No. 990 of 2017, expressly eliminated the prohibition established by Resolution No. 2,511 of 2007 for services rendered by commission agents in respect to the VAT exemption. Therefore, as of the entry into force of this resolution, commercial services rendered by commission agents could be qualified by the customs authority as export services, benefiting from the VAT exemption.

Once a service has been qualified as an export service by the customs authority, this service is included in a list of export services issued by the authority. Once included in the export services list, it is not necessary to require the qualification again. Therefore, all taxpayers that provide such type of services benefit from the exemption.

The current list of export services issued by the customs authority was updated on February 21 2017 and does not include services rendered by commission agents. Therefore, commission agents that intend to benefit from this exemption will need to require such qualification, following a procedure established by the customs authorities.

Loreto Pelegrí (loreto.pelegri@cl.pwc.com) and Bernardita Parodi (bernardita.parodi@cl.pwc.com)
PwC
Website: www.pwc.cl

Share this article