In brief
Room V of the Federal Chamber of Appeals (“Chamber”) issued two recent rulings dated 26 and 29 August 2025 (Exterran Argentina SRL — Case No. 60.234/2022 and Case No. 15.324/2024).
In both decisions, the Chamber overturned the criteria previously established by Rooms A and B of the National Tax Court (“Tax Court”) regarding the deductibility in income tax of losses arising from transactions involving the purchase of government securities in pesos and their subsequent sale in US dollars.
The Chamber held that these losses are not deductible for income tax purposes.
In focus
The Tax Court, in decisions issued by Room A (Case TF 46953-I) and Room B (Case TF 47987-I), had admitted the deductibility of losses arising from the purchase of government securities in pesos and their subsequent sale in dollars. The Tax Court considered that the difference between the purchase price and the sale price (measured in pesos at the official exchange rate) generated a deductible loss for income tax purposes.
To illustrate the transaction, consider the following numerical example:
- Government securities quoted in dollars (e.g., USD 100) are purchased for ARS 20,000.
- Subsequently, those same securities are sold and USD 100 is received.
- For income tax purposes, the dollars received must be valued at the official exchange rate. If, in this scenario, the official dollar rate is ARS 116, the sale of the securities would generate income of ARS 11,600.
- Thus, the transaction would result in a loss of ARS 8,400, since the securities were purchased for ARS 20,000 and sold for ARS 11,600.
Grounds for the Chamber’s decision
- The claimed loss was not actually realized, as the company did not dispose of the dollars obtained in the transaction but rather retained them in its assets.
- For a loss to be deductible, it must be an effectively realized negative result and be linked to the generation, maintenance or preservation of taxable income.
- The difference between the implicit exchange rate of the transaction and the official exchange rate does not constitute a real loss under the law.
- Allowing the deduction would mean recognizing a loss that never occurred, which contravenes the principle of economic reality established in the Tax Procedure Law.
- It is not appropriate to allow taxpayers to deduct a loss they did not incur, based solely on a formal accounting registration criterion.
- A different solution would virtually repeal the foreign exchange regulations that, at that time, limited access to the Single and Free Exchange Market, thereby undermining the regulator’s powers and potentially violating the principle of equality, which is one of the foundations of taxation.
Accordingly, the Chamber reversed the Tax Court’s decisions and rejected the company’s claims for the reimbursement of income tax, assigning costs in both instances due to the novelty of the issue.
It is important to note that both decisions issued by the Chamber were appealed before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation through a Federal Extraordinary Appeal.
Barbara Roca and Bernardo Trueba, Associates, have contributed to this legal update.