COMFER Registers "Weaknesses" To Control the Billing of Radios and TV Channels
<p style="text-align:justify">A decree from the year 2001 had empowered the agency to inspect with the AFIP the collection of advertising charges, but the rule was never regulated. According to the AGN, the Committee does not have an up-to-date database and it was not possible to verify whether the financial aspects on which taxes are paid by companies are monitored.</p>
Decree 762 of 2001 had allowed the Federal Broadcasting Committee (COMFER, for its acronym in Spanish) to control, along with the Federal Public Revenue Administration (AFIP), the charges levied by TV channels and radios. Although both agencies had 180 calendar days to predict how they would work together, the standard was never regulated. A report from the General Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish) states that the Committee "did not comply" with the auditing tasks delegated to it and that the management of the organization "has weaknesses that impede the efficiency" of control over billing of companies.
The Broadcasting Law (22,285) establishes that the license holders must pay a tax proportional to the amount of their gross billing for advertising, income and programs produced or purchased, among other items. Collection, administration and control of taxes were granted by COMFER until 1994, when the AFIP assumed these responsibilities. But with the 2001 decree, the two agencies were left on an equal footing, and the Committee was obliged to keep up to date the registration of affidavits submitted by licensees from all over the country, to determine debts, to follow up plans of payment facilities, to cross the information that the AFIP sends and to quantify the infractions that committed the means that are under its orbit.
However, the COMFER informed the Audit that it works with databases that are not related to each other, or to those of the AFIP. In fact, the agencies do not control the same universe of broadcasters: up to July 2007, the AFIP controlled 6,034 licensees obligated to tax, while the Committee operated, until February of the same year, on 1,916. According to the report, the COMFER does not control the percentage of the levies that corresponds to it depending on the collection that must be transferred.
This difference between the control universes is related to another observation of the AGN. It is that broadcasters are obliged to submit to the Committee copies of the affidavit and the deposit slip they submit to the AFIP, but the current sanctions regime does not provide for any punishment for licensees who do not comply with this procedure.
The Audit was unable to verify whether COMFER fulfilled one of its most important responsibilities: to monitor the economic and financial aspects of the channels and radios on which the amount of encumbrances is measured. In March 2007, the Committee responded that its database of advertising agencies was "truncated", could not be fully loaded "information," or a proper issue of "tracking certificates" of these indicators.
On the other hand, the Watchdog, which approved its report in December 2008, was also unable to audit the tax debt recorded by COMFER in 2005 and amounting to $ 14,181,112.46. The Committee did not reply to the AGN's request for information on 20 July 2007, nor the extension period requested by the AGN. Of this total, it was not possible to audit the amount recovered through the agreements of payment facilities, about $ 3,995,591.90, nor the executions articulated by COMFER for $ 10,185,520.48.