If your answer is YES to any of these situations, we present you the obligations that you must comply with.
First of all, we need to understand:
What is the National Registry of Foreign Investments (RNIE, for its Spanish acronym)?
In Mexico there is a government institution that, since 1993, has been in charge of regulating and channeling the foreign investment in such a way that it contributes to the national development. This authority is known as the “Registro Nacional de Inversión Extranjera-RNIE”.If you answered YES to any of the questions above, I invite you to read the following article which explains the obligations that being in any of the two situations aforementioned entail before the National Registry of Foreign Investment (RNIE for its Spanish acronym).
It is in charge of having a statistical control of all the foreigners that invest in Mexico, whether it is through Mexican companies, trusts or directly as natural persons that carry out any commercial activity.
Glossary:
The three main concepts that we must take into consideration for the interpretation and analysis of the obligations that the RNIE establishes:
Commercial activity. The activities acknowledged by the Mexican regulations such as the Code of Commerce. The most common for our region are: real estate activities (developers), tourism-related companies (hotels, hostels, inns, etc.), primary sector activities such as farming, livestock, fishing, etc.
Trust in restricted zones. This is the contract in which the foreigner “acquires” in Mexico, as the beneficiary of the use rights of a property, and this trust is managed by a fiduciary institution, who is, therefore, responsible before the RNIE.
Mexican companies. All the companies created under Mexican laws, whether they are commercial or civil. Examples:
- Anonymous Companies
- Limited Responsibility Companies
- Civil Companies
- Civil Associations*
*For the non-profit organizations, the authority has decided to stick to the international normativity and not require them to comply with the obligations that we will talk about shortly.
Who is obligated to file reports before the RNIE?
1) Foreign natural person with lucrative activities in Mexico and/or member of a Mexican company.
2) Legal representative of a foreign natural person or company or Mexican companies with foreign investment in its social equity.
3) Fiduciary agent.
4) Public notary
Obligations before the RNIE.
At the moment of taking part in a Mexican company, trust or natural person with lucrative activities, marks the beginning of the obligation to register before the RNIE.
It is worth mentioning that this obligation is not of fiscal characteristics, it is just informative.
These are the 4 sections that the RNIE uses to catalog the subjects. The following table is in Spanish:
Considerations for each report:
The quarters are from January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December. Presented for:
– Modifications to the name, fiscal address or economic activity of the company.
– Modifications to the equity and shareholder structure for amounts higher than 20 million pesos.
– Loans received from or paid to foreign shareholders for amounts higher than 20 million pesos.
It should also be filed if any of the following accounts present a balance higher than 110 million pesos:
– Initial total assets / Final total assets
– Initial total passives / Final total passives
– Incomes in the country and outside of it
– Costs and expenses in the country and outside of it
Penalties:
The penalties for the no compliance of any of the before-mentioned obligations go from $2,450 pesos up to $403,000 pesos, and even though the obligated subject complied but outside the deadline, the fine would still be applied and it has to be paid at the same time as the obligation is complied with.
Conclusions
It is necessary to take into consideration the importance of this informative obligation, since, apart from complying with the authority, it acts as a support to know and analyze the status of our investment by time periods.
At TR&A we are able to give advice about this as well as help you with the filing of the corresponding reports. You can contact us via:
Telephone: +52 (322) 209 1416, (311) 2584177
Email: inquire@teranrojas.com
Jorge Cadena, C.P.A. | M.Tx.
Partner – Consulting
Teran Rojas & Associates.
This article was written by Jorge Cadena. You can find more articles and seminars in www.teranrojas.com.This article is owned by TR & Associates and its reproduction requires the written consent of Mr. Cadena, who have the rights of this work. Copyright 2018. This article is a general explanation of tax issues valid at the time of publication. “That article may be contrary to the interpretation of the tax authorities”.For each particular case we recommend obtaining written information from the applicable fiscal responsibilities of your case.