Taxes in Argentina for a Mercado Libre seller
I sell on Mercado Libre from Argentina, bring goods in from China and run my own warehouse in Buenos Aires. Everything written here has been tested on my own shipments, not retold from someone else’s guides.
Guides to Argentine taxes are written for an abstract foreign business. IT incentives, exporters, industry. A marketplace seller gets little out of it. Their taxes work differently. Part is withheld by the platform itself, part comes back from customs, and part depends on the province they are registered in.
Let us go through what a seller actually pays, as of July 2026.
The three levels you are taxed at
Argentine taxes come in three layers. Hence all the confusion.
Federal. IVA (VAT) and Ganancias (profit tax). Administered by ARCA, formerly AFIP.
Provincial. Ingresos Brutos, a turnover tax. Every province has its own rate.
Platform withholdings. Mercado Libre and Mercado Pago deduct part of the taxes in advance straight from your sales and pay the state on your behalf.
The third point is usually what floors a beginner. The money for the goods arrives already net of things they did not know about.
The fork that decides everything. Monotributo or Responsable Inscripto
This is the first decision, and it matters more than choosing the product. It sets your tax burden. And whether you can import at all.
| Monotributo | Responsable Inscripto | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay | one fixed monthly payment by category | IVA 21% + Ganancias + IIBB |
| Turnover ceiling | about 126.6m ARS a year (category K, scale from July 2026) | no ceiling |
| Tax credits | no | yes, all input IVA is credited |
| Importing for resale | not allowed | allowed |
| Bookkeeping | minimal | an accountant is needed |
The beginner’s main mistake. Starting to import on monotributo because it is easier. A monotributista cannot clear a commercial batch in their own name. People go through intermediaries and lose both customs VAT amounts. Then they wonder why their cost base is one and a half times what they calculated.
The rule is simple. If you trade local goods and are feeling out a niche, monotributo is enough. If you intend to import from China, take Responsable Inscripto from the start. The switch is arranged up to the first batch.
Ganancias. What profit costs in 2026
For a company (SAS, SRL) the rate follows a scale. Below are ARCA’s official figures for 2026. They are indexed to inflation every year, so numbers from last year’s articles no longer work.
| Annual profit, ARS | Rate | In dollars at a rate of ~1,500 |
|---|---|---|
| up to 133,514,185 | 25% | up to roughly 89k |
| from 133,514,185 to 1,335,141,857 | 30% on the excess | 89k – 890k |
| above 1,335,141,857 | 35% on the excess | from 890k |
For almost every seller that is 25%. To move past the first band you need close to a hundred thousand dollars of net profit a year. Keep the dividend tax in mind separately, 7% when taking profit out of the company for yourself.
IVA. The rate is 21%, and you pay less
The standard VAT rate is 21%. There is a reduced 10.5% on food and medicines and a raised 27% on utilities for business. For physical goods it is almost always 21%.
Here is what saves money. VAT is charged on the markup, not on revenue. Input IVA, the kind paid on purchase or at customs, is credited against output IVA. Buy goods for 60,000 including VAT, sell for 100,000, and the tax is charged on the difference.
That is why monotributo costs an importer so much. There is no credit there, and the whole customs VAT burns away.
Ingresos Brutos. The provincial tax people forget
IIBB is a tax on turnover, not on profit. The rate depends on the province and the activity; for retail it is usually around 4,5%, but it varies from province to province.
Two things hit the calculations. First, the tax is charged on turnover, so you pay even if you broke even. Second, since July 2025 the seller’s province also affects the Mercado Libre commission. The platform factors it into the rate, so the same product costs differently for sellers in different provinces.
What the platform withholds itself
Mercado Libre and Mercado Pago act as tax agents. They deduct advances of IVA, Ganancias and IIBB straight from your sales. For a Responsable Inscripto this is not a loss, what is withheld will count against your annual liabilities. But the cash gap is real. The money goes out at once and the credit comes with the return.
Build this into your working capital in advance. Otherwise there will not be enough for the next batch, even though on paper there is profit.
Customs. Half the payments come back
The largest sum an importer sees is at customs. The real cost is far smaller, and the difference comes down to status.
Importing a container means paying the duty for the product code, a 3% statistical fee, 21% IVA, a 20% IVA advance, a 6% Ganancias advance and an IIBB advance of about 2.5%. In total you lay out around 84% of the batch’s value at customs.
For a Responsable Inscripto the real tax is about 23%. Everything marked as IVA and advances comes back as a credit against your sales taxes. Only the duty and the statistical fee are non-recoverable. For a monotributista, and for anyone importing through an intermediary, nothing comes back. That is where the one-and-a-half-times difference in cost comes from.
The rules differ for air parcels. The first 400 dollars of the goods’ FOB value, excluding shipping, come in duty-free. But that is a personal-use allowance, up to five shipments a year. It will not do for regular trade.
What is left in practice
Take an item priced at 60,000 ARS, bought for 25,000, sold by a Responsable Inscripto.
| Selling price | 60 000 |
| Mercado Libre commission (about 14%) | −8 400 |
| Shipping (price above the 33,000 threshold — paid by the seller) | −7 000 |
| Cost of goods | −25 000 |
| IVA on the markup | −4 000 |
| IIBB, 4.5% of turnover | −2 700 |
| Ganancias, 25% of profit | −about 3,200 |
| Left | roughly 9,700 |
The figures are rounded, and yours will shift with category, weight and province. Work out your own in the free calculator, where all six countries and both regimes sit side by side.
What to remember
Choosing the regime matters more than choosing the product. On monotributo importing is closed off, and getting round it through acquaintances costs you one and a half times your cost base. Ganancias for an ordinary seller is 25%, and the scale is indexed every year. IVA is paid on the markup. IIBB is charged on turnover even when there is no profit, and it also moves your commission. The main thing to remember is customs. There you lay out 84%, while the real cost for a compliant importer is about 23%.
⭐ By the way: the full landed cost with clearance and recoverable taxes is worked out in the customs calculator 2.0 from the PRO pack — along with unit-economics tables where the sole-trader and company regimes sit side by side.
Working out your unit economics?
Our free calculator works out profit, margin and ROI with commission, shipping, taxes and ads included, across all 6 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay and Chile.
Open the calculator → ⭐ PRO — customs and unit-economics tables Ask in the chat 🚀 Three ways to start