With the increase in the Payroll Tax (ISN), the Yucatán government intends for businesses to resolve the financial crisis of the Va y Ven public transportation system, and this shouldn’t be the case, stated Emilio Blanco del Villar, president of the Yucatán Business Coordinating Council (CCE).
In an interview with Forbes, Blanco del Villar, who is also president of the Employers’ Confederation of the Mexican Republic (Coparmex) in Mérida, said that the tax increase was approved to cover a financial shortfall that they have been unable to resolve.
Nearly halfway through the year, Va y Ven reported a financial deficit of more than 1.86 billion pesos, which has caused a setback in the service that was presented as modern and efficient. Due to the debt, the public service has been suspended on several occasions, and old buses have been put back into operation, affecting users.
In this context, the business leader stated that the payroll tax will strengthen the public transportation system, which is managed by the Transportation Agency in Yucatán (ATY), since financial problems have caused a deficit for the Yucatán government, “but the business sector cannot possibly remedy this.”
“Things won’t improve with taxes, but with strategies involving belt-tightening that will allow us to achieve things, and for that, the business sector will always be involved.”
Although the task of governments is to manage public resources to solve problems with services for citizens, in Yucatán it seems that this is not being achieved, and they are resorting to an increase in the tax on businesses that will impact Yucatecan families because it affects employment.
“In short, business owners would be bailing out the Va y Ven system.
In this context, Emilio Blanco del Villar, president of the Yucatán Business Coordinating Council (CCE), demanded that the Yucatán government not use the money from the payroll tax increase to bail out the Va y Ven transportation system in Mérida, which has a 400 million peso fiscal deficit.
“The Yucatán state government has a very significant deficit in the transportation system, but business owners should not be the only ones to bear the burden of the payment or the bailout,” he told Forbes Mexico.
The Yucatán government collects more than 3 billion pesos annually from payroll taxes.
With the payroll tax increase approved by the Yucatán Congress, revenue will increase by 400 million pesos in 2026, the business leader stated.
In the extensive interview with Forbes, written by Enrique Hernández, the business leader said that he had He recalled that the meetings with the governor of Yucatán, Joaquín Díaz Mena, were poorly timed, so “we told them that we absolutely do not accept the increase in the payroll tax from 3 percent to 3.75 percent.”
In this regard, he said that business owners made an effort to explain the payroll tax increase, including “Coparmex, the Business Coordinating Council, and more than 200 business owners from all sectors of the state, and we unanimously said no to the payroll tax increase.”
Initially, they managed to ensure that small and medium-sized businesses would not see an increase in the payroll tax, so it will only impact large companies, he explained.
“It’s a partial victory, because in the end we managed to get the governor of Yucatán to understand the needs of the state’s small and medium-sized businesses,” he stated.
Source: yucatan
