Free fiscal advise in Latin America

Albert owns a shoe repair shop in Mexico City. Until recently he worked off the books. “I hadn’t registered because I thought it was complicated and that they were going to charge me lots of fees, but my nephew invited me to his university and, there, they explained to me why it was to my advantage to register and helped me calculate my tax; they also showed me that I wouldn’t have to pay anything the first year”. Alberto is one of the users of the Accounting and Tax Support Centres (NAF) now in operation in 330 universities in 10 countries in Latin America.

The NAFs are a university social responsibility experience developed by the Brazilian tax agency. Through the NAFs, the agency trains students on tax matters and professional ethics so that, in their community-service or work-study hours, they can provide free advice to low-income individuals and small business owners. The community benefits from assistance in resolving basic tax questions, while the agency fulfils its role of offering civic and tax education. The university, for its part, strengthens its link to the community and provides its students with tax expertise at no cost.

Providing continuity to the work of EUROsociAL II—funded by the EU, as is EUROsociAL+—which was the vehicle for promoting expansion of the NAFs in Latin America and creating a network, Red NAF, this new phase of the programme seeks to leverage the experience by strengthening its social nature, providing training in values to the students, and consolidation of its tools for monitoring and evaluation.

With those objectives, a meeting was held in Buenos Aires to discuss the best NAF experiences, organised by the Democratic Governance area of EUROsociAL+, which is coordinated by FIIAPP and the Federal Administration of Public Revenue (AFIP) of Argentina, a country that is starting to implement NAFs. This activity included the participation of representatives of the tax administrations and universities of Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico.

During the different sessions, key issues for the development of NAFS were discussed. Additionally, work was done with Colombia to develop a strategy for promoting tax culture in post-conflict zones. Representatives of the Directorate of National Taxes and Customs of Colombia (DIAN) learned about the pedagogic and communication strategies of the AFIP, and had the opportunity to learn about the work that institution is doing.