Tax Cultures and Agrarian Fiscal Disputes: From the 2008 Conflict to Legislative Proposals on Export Duties

Abstract

This article examines disputes over export duties in Argentina through the analytical lens of tax cultures. Taking the 2008 agrarian conflict as a critical turning point and focusing on its rearticulation in the legislative proposals introduced in 2024, the paper argues that these instances should be understood not as isolated events but as part of a longer-term dispute over the legitimacy, legality, and territorial distribution of fiscal power. Based on a qualitative analysis of legislative, judicial, and discursive sources, the article reconstructs the institutionalisation of the conflict, tracing its shift from territorial protest to parliamentary arenas, and analyzes the legal framework governing export duties, with particular attention to Article 755 of the Customs Code. It also develops a typology of recent legislative initiatives, identifying different variants of a shared tax culture that structures competing approaches to fiscal reform. In this context, Congress emerges as a key arena for the rearticulation of the conflict, where sedimented fiscal grammars are expressed and contested. The article concludes that agrarian taxation, far from being a merely technical issue, constitutes a central field of political and symbolic struggle shaping the relationship between the state, productive actors, and territories.