On 9 October Bolivia's National Tax Service (SIN) issued the last piece of the legal framework for an exemption approved in July. Board Regulatory Resolution (RND) No. 102600000039 sets out the procedure for invoicing, without VAT, domestic sales of inputs, seeds, drones and accessories, genetics, tools, equipment, capital goods and industrial plants destined for agriculture, industry, construction, transport and mining. With it, the benefit created by Article 9 of Law No. 1755 and defined by Supreme Decree No. 5709 can now be applied in companies' invoicing.
The resolution is short and operational. It neither widens nor narrows the benefit, which the Tax Code does not allow it to do, but sets out how the invoice is issued. For importers and buyers, however, the details matter. The VAT exemption covers only the importer's first sale, is documented with an invoice that carries no right to input credit, and is limited to the goods listed, tariff heading by tariff heading, in the decree's annex.
Three instruments for one exemption
The basis is Article 9 of Law No. 1755 of 30 July 2026, which amended the 2026 General State Budget. It exempts from tariffs and VAT, for five years from that date, the import and domestic sale of those goods when they are destined for the five sectors listed. Like every tax exemption, it has the rank of law. Supreme Decree No. 5709 of 16 September regulated it with two clarifications. Article 2 ties the import exemption to the goods described in an annex, identified by tariff subheading, and Article 3 provides that the domestic VAT exemption applies to the importer's first sale, for which invoices, tax notes or equivalent documents carrying no right to input credit must be issued.
The annex makes the law's broad wording specific. It includes, among other items, purebred breeding cattle and pigs, bovine semen, maize, sorghum and sunflower seed for sowing, nitrogen, phosphate and potash fertilisers, certain herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, foot-and-mouth vaccine, combine harvesters, seed drills and milking machines, bulldozers, excavators and graders, plastic moulding machines, photovoltaic generators, certain tractors and lorries, and drones of various weights. The law speaks of capital goods in general, but the decree applies the benefit to the subheadings in the annex, so equipment that does not appear there falls outside the regime even if it fits the generic description.
How invoicing works
The RND deals with the domestic sale. It covers taxpayers making the first sale of the goods concerned (Article 2) and requires them to issue the exempt invoices through a specific option, “Facturación Bienes e Insumos Productivos Ley N° 1755”, within the invoicing module of the SIN's online tax office, reserved for invoices of this kind (Article 3.I). The same option lets taxpayers add to the National Taxpayer Register the activity of wholesale trade in those goods under Law No. 1755 (Article 3.II). Access is through the usual SIAT en Línea credentials, whose use is the taxpayer's sole responsibility (Article 3.III).
The single additional provision makes clear that the invoicing option and the economic activity are temporary and will be available only while Article 9 of the law applies. In practice, a company that invoices through its own system will have to issue these exempt invoices through the channel in the online tax office and adjust its internal processes to separate exempt from taxable sales.
What it means for importers and buyers
For the importer, the exemption works at two points. At customs it pays no tariff or VAT on the goods in the annex, and on its first sale it invoices without VAT. Because that invoice generates no input credit and later sales follow the ordinary regime, VAT applies again if the goods are resold. The benefit therefore reaches the end user most clearly when the importer sells to it directly.
For the buyer, the effect depends on its tax position. A company in the general regime that could have claimed the VAT on a piece of equipment as input credit gains mainly a cash-flow advantage, because it no longer pays the tax up front. For a buyer that cannot use that credit, the saving is direct. In both cases the removal of the tariff makes the goods cheaper to import.
There are points the resolution does not address and that are worth planning for. It does not say how to show that the goods are destined for one of the five sectors, so it is prudent to keep records of the buyer and the use of the goods in case of a tax audit. Nor does it deal with sales made before the new option was enabled, and it leaves unchanged the general VAT rules on input credit for businesses that combine exempt and taxable sales.
How long the benefit lasts
The law sets a five-year term, until July 2031. The policy memorandum annexed to Law No. 1765, which approved Bolivia's programme with the International Monetary Fund, lists the repeal of Article 9 of Law No. 1755 among the policies the 2027 budget will take into account. The RND, issued after that memorandum, puts the exemption into operation, and because the benefit has the rank of law, removing it would require another law from the Assembly. Businesses planning multi-year purchases of equipment or inputs should follow the debate on the 2027 budget and check now that their goods appear in the decree's annex.
