Carlos Tevez during a game at the Estadio Alberto J. Armando in Buenos Aires on April 3.
Photographer: Marcelo Endelli / Getty Images
Photographer: Marcelo Endelli / Getty Images
Argentine football legend Carlos Tevez has filed a lawsuit to avoid paying a new wealth tax, the latest example of the difficulty in getting millionaires to comply with the tax.
Tevez filed the official complaint Thursday in Argentina’s national court of appeal, according to a record of the case in the justice system’s case. Contacted by Bloomberg News, Tevez’s lawyer, Juan Carlos Nicolini, confirmed the order, which raises the unconstitutionality of the wealth tax.
Nicolini said the complaint was confidential and declined to provide further details. He estimated that there are currently more than 100 lawsuits filed by individuals to obtain tax exemption.
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The Argentine government has received a unique, so-called extraordinary contribution, which is expected to be paid by about 13,000 wealthy citizens. The tax applies to Argentines with assets of more than $ 2.2 million, and the tax varies depending on the amount and location of the assets. The payment deadline was Friday.
Lawmakers estimated last year that the tax would exceed about 300 billion pesos ($ 3.2 billion), but by March, data show that the tax authority received only 6.1 billion pesos, or about 2% of this target, from the wealth tax. Dozens of wealthy Argentines are challenging the tax in court, calling it a “confiscator.”
Read more: Wealth tax sends wealthy Argentines to court in last-minute fight
Tevez plays for Argentina’s most famous team, Boca Juniors, where he won 10 cups. He was born in Fuerte Apache, a poor neighborhood in the Buenos Aires subway area. In 2019, Netflix released the series “El Apache”, a fictional historical story of his life.
He started playing as a child in the lower ranks of Boca Juniors, but his ability to score catapulted into Brazil and then into European football, where he played for almost 10 years and made a fortune. Tevez is the most winning Argentine footballer after Lionel Messi, after winning 29 international and national titles for teams such as Manchester United, Manchester City and Juventus.