On January 29, the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) unanimously approved the bills on tax and customs matters submitted by President Nicolás Maduro on January 14. The initiatives will be enacted by the Executive Branch and published in the Official Gazette in the coming weeks.

The four laws approved were not discussed in the National Assembly presided over by Juan Guaidó, but were debated in the National Constituent Assembly under Diosdado Cabello which responds to President Maduro. Considering the current political and institutional context in Venezuela, the fact that the initiatives were introduced by Maduro and that all ANC legislators are members of the ruling party, it was pretty clear that the regulations would advance both in the committee and in the Constituent Assembly.

The main points of the bills passed today are:

• Tax Code Reform. Current tax exemptions have been reduced from five years to one year, with the possibility of annual extensions. In addition, tax value units, used to standardize and facilitate compliance with tax obligations, must be expressed in the cryptocurrency Petro. Also, assets may be frozen in case of tax evasion.

• Reform to Value Added Tax (VAT) Law. A general applicable tax rate that will vary between 8% and 16.5%, as determined by the Executive Branch and a surcharge of between 5% and 25% on goods and services paid for using foreign currency and cryptocurrencies other than the Petro. Finally, vegetables, flour and bread have been exempted from VAT, among other products.

• The Single National Productive Portfolio Act creates a committee to manage and evaluate the performance of production credits and register beneficiaries. Running the committee will be current Vice President of the Economic Area, Tareck El Aissami.

• Customs and Foreign Trade Law Reform. The idea is to limit the amount of imported products and to boost the production and export of Venezuelan goods, by creating an inter-ministerial committee to manage the tariff policy.