Chile opens a voluntary full VAT withholding regime for agricultural services

What changed in detail

Resolución Exenta SII N° 83, issued in Santiago on 23 June 2026, establishes a voluntary regime of cambio total del sujeto de derecho del IVA — full transfer of VAT liability to the buyer — for agricultural services. It applies from the date its extract is published in the Diario Oficial.

Covered services are acts or supplies made for consideration by a provider whose declared SII activities are actividades de apoyo a la agricultura (016100) and/or actividades poscosecha (016300), consisting exclusively of material work directly linked to agricultural production or primary conditioning — land preparation, sowing, planting, manual input application, harvesting, cleaning, sorting, grading, packing, labelling and preservation. Personnel supply under code 783000 is included where the personnel are directed specifically at that material work; the activity code alone is not sufficient.

Who may apply (resolutivo 3). A farmer holding at least one declared crop activity; at least two years since agricultural activities were declared; ownership, usufruct or lease of the agricultural property, with tax capital of 120 UTA or more and agricultural sales of 120 UTA or more in at least one of the last two commercial years; and first-category declaration on full accounting.

How it works (resolutivos 5 and 7). Application is by administrative petition on Formulario 2117; the Regional Director decides after a compliance report, and the taxpayer becomes a withholding agent from notification. The agent then issues a factura de compra stating separately 100% of the VAT to be withheld, which it declares and pays as a withholding tax; the service provider does not issue an invoice for that transaction.

Entry and continued participation require good standing: no serious or repeated compliance failures, absence from the Nómina de Difícil Fiscalización and the Nómina de Contribuyentes Sujetos a Retención, no improper or fraudulent use of tax documents, and no pending tax-offence proceedings.

What it means

Chile has used cambio de sujeto for years in sectors where the seller side is fragmented and hard to audit, and agriculture is a textbook case — the service providers here are frequently crews and single operators. What is different is that this one is opt-in, and the applicant is the buyer, so the compliance burden lands on the party that wanted it.

That framing is worth taking seriously before applying. Becoming a withholding agent means issuing the factura de compra, declaring and paying the full VAT, and holding the good-standing conditions continuously — the Regional Director can revoke. In exchange the buyer stops depending on its crews’ invoicing and input-credit hygiene. It is a trade of administrative work for recoverability certainty, and it only pays for producers with enough volume to feel the second.