(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 4 May 2001 IAPA press release: IAPA DECLARES “PERMANENT WATCH” OVER TAX ON PRESS IN ARGENTINA MIAMI, Florida (May 4, 2001) — Senior officers of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) declared they are on “permanent watch” over what they see as a flagrant violation of press freedom with […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 4 May 2001 IAPA press release:
IAPA DECLARES “PERMANENT WATCH” OVER TAX ON PRESS IN ARGENTINA
MIAMI, Florida (May 4, 2001) — Senior officers of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) declared they are on “permanent watch” over what they see as a flagrant violation of press freedom with the imposition in Argentina of a stiff sales tax on newspapers, magazines and periodicals, while at the same time considering sending an international mission to the country.
IAPA Executive Committee Chairman Diana Daniels, The Washington Post Company, Washington, D.C.; Rafael Molina, Ahora magazine, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, chairman of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and Robert Cox, IAPA First Vice President, The Post & Courier, Charleston, South Carolina, thus added their support to the extreme concern expressed earlier this week by IAPA President Danilo Arbilla, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, news weekly Búsqueda, at the imposition of the 21% value added tax on print media, a move he described as regressive and discriminatory.
Leaders of the IAPA are on “permanent watch” while they contemplate sending a delegation to Argentina. An earlier request for a meeting with Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo was referred to the Secretary of the Internal Revenue Service, José María Farré, the Association was told in a message received on April 3.
The IAPA regards this new tax as a curtailment of press freedom and the public’s right to information and as endangering the plurality of provision of news because it will increase the price of newspapers, reducing even further their circulation at a time when advertising has been sharply cut back as a result of the economic recession. This tax burden is also a direct limitation of the right to information, the Association stresses, as it lessens the people’s access to a varied and free press, whose very plurality permits the overseeing of the government’s actions, thus providing better control over those in power.
