Since taking office in late 2023, Javier Milei has tried, in more ways than one, to get Argentines to pull their dollars out from “under the mattress” — that is, to bring them into the formal economy.

The first initiative was the Asset Regularization Regime, a tax amnesty that allowed Argentines to declare previously hidden assets. It launched on July 18, 2024, and its final phase closed on May 8, 2025, with more than US$32 billion brought into the open.

Although experts considered it a major success, it wasn’t enough for the Milei administration. In 2025, Congress passed the Fiscal Innocence Law, allowing Argentines to use their undeclared dollars under a presumption of innocence before the tax authority.

That wasn’t enough either. Earlier this month, Economy Minister Luis Caputo sent Congress a revamped and expanded version of the law, making it even easier for taxpayers to regularize undeclared dollars.

One of the bill’s most notable changes is that it scraps the wealth and income ceilings for joining the regime — meaning that, from now on, “large taxpayers” will also be able to benefit.

Milei’s is hardly the first government to try to get savers to declare their dollars. If anything, it’s the norm: the administrations of Alberto Fernández, Mauricio Macri, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner all did the same, with varying degrees of success.

That’s because the amount of dollars Argentines hold outside the system is enormous. According to official INDEC data, the estimated total at the end of 2025 was US$254.9 billion, up 4.5% from a year earlier.

For comparison, the loan the International Monetary Fund (IMF) extended to Argentina in 2018 — the largest in the institution’s history — was US$45 billion.

Dollar demand isn’t letting up

Despite the stability of the........

© Buenos Aires Herald