Bolivia’s National Tax Service (SIN) signed the resolution on Friday 30 October, one day before the deadline it was moving. That deadline, for the 2025 tax year of the Unified Agricultural Regime (RAU), fell on a Saturday. Under Board Regulatory Resolution (RND) No. 102600000044, farmers now have until 30 November 2026 to file their returns and pay, and owners of small holdings have until the same date to apply for the Certificate of Non-Taxability. It is the second season in a row in which the regime’s reference date has given way to requests from the sector.
The RAU is a simplified regime that lets crop and livestock producers within its land-size limits settle VAT, the Transactions Tax, the Corporate Income Tax (IUE) and the RC-IVA in a single annual payment. It was created in 1996 by Supreme Decree No. 24463 for individuals and undivided estates engaged in farming or livestock activities on land whose area falls within the limits of the decree’s Annex I; according to the SIN, cooperatives are also covered. The tax is based on hectares rather than sales, multiplied by a fixed rate per hectare that varies by zone, sub-zone and activity. The rates for the 2025 tax year were updated by RND No. 102600000036, in force since 1 October 2026. In the Santa Cruz sub-zone the rate for crop land is Bs 41.11 per hectare; in the Chaco sub-zone it is Bs 4.27.
What changes, and what does not
The resolution consists of a single article. It extends to 30 November 2026 the deadline for filing returns and paying RAU tax liabilities, and the deadline for applying for the Certificate of Non-Taxability, in both cases for the 2025 tax year. Article 5 of RND No. 101800000022 of 2018 already tied the certificate to the filing deadline, but the SIN chose to name it expressly. That matters to small landholders, who pay no rate because their land is below the non-taxable maximum (Supreme Decree No. 24463, Art. 10) yet must still prove it every year.
What the resolution leaves untouched matters as much as what it moves. The rate per hectare remains the one set by RND No. 102600000036, and the Tax Code (Law No. 2492, Art. 64) bars SIN resolutions from modifying, extending or removing the scope of a tax or its constituent elements. The resolution rests instead on the SIN’s power to grant reasoned, ex officio extensions for the payment of taxes (Arts. 53.III and 66.7 of the same code). Its reach is also confined to the 2025 tax year. The general rule, set in 2003 by RND No. 10-0014-03, still points to 31 October of each year, and nothing in the new text alters it for later years.
A deadline that has become elastic
Even so, 31 October is starting to look more like an opening bid than a cut-off. For the 2024 tax year the SIN extended the deadline three times, first to 28 November 2025 (RND No. 102500000039 of 10 October), then to 31 December (RND No. 102500000046) and finally to 30 January 2026 (RND No. 102500000053), the last of them citing adverse weather. This year’s resolution says less. It relies on requests from the sector covered by the RAU, which in the words of its recitals “reports difficulties in complying within the established deadlines”, without saying what those difficulties are. And it arrived on the eve of the deadline, whereas last year’s first extension was issued three weeks ahead.
The calendar helps explain the pressure. By our count, there were 31 days between 1 October, when the 2025 rates took effect, and the original deadline; with the extension there are 61. According to the SIN, certificate applications open only once the updated rates are in force. For a regime calculated on that table, the compliance window was narrow.
What it means for farmers, buyers and agribusiness
For producers the consequence is straightforward. Anyone who files and pays for the 2025 tax year by 30 November does so on time; after that date, according to the SIN’s guidance on the regime, fines and late charges apply.
For those who buy produce from RAU taxpayers the effect is less obvious. Supreme Decree No. 24463 (Art. 26) requires producers, in every sale, to show their registration certificate and proof of payment for the latest tax period, and to let the buyer photocopy them. Until 30 November, a supplier who has not yet paid for the 2025 tax year is not in breach on that ground alone. Procurement teams at grain buyers, mills and agro-processors would do well to align their checks with that reading rather than hold up purchases over a payment that is not yet due.
The same date also concentrates another deadline for the sector. Two days earlier, RND No. 102600000043 moved to 30 November the filing and payment of IUE for taxpayers whose financial year closed on 30 June 2026, the year-end that Supreme Decree No. 24051 (Art. 39) assigns to agricultural, livestock, agro-industrial, rubber and Brazil-nut businesses. Family groups that hold land under the RAU alongside companies in the general regime will face both obligations on the same day, with the cash and administrative strain that implies.
The practical advice is to treat 30 November as fixed. The resolution sets a single date with no provision for further extensions, and what happened with the 2024 tax year is no basis for planning on another. If the pressure returns next year, the underlying question will be whether it makes sense to keep a deadline that falls only 31 days after the rates used to calculate the tax come into force.
