Legislative decree4-2012

Title in the index

Disposiciones para el Fortalecimiento del Sistema Tributario y el Combate a la Defraudación y al Contrabando

The instrument's title and the issuing authority's name print in Spanish in both editions, because they are the gazette's own words. Translating the title of a legal norm would mean issuing a title the gazette never gave it.

Published Feb 25, 2012

Open the document at the source

The archive links the official document: it does not reproduce it, summarize it or interpret it.

The three dates

Issued
No date in the index
The date the index gives as the date of issue.
Published
Feb 25, 2012
The edition of the gazette the source published it in.
In force
Mar 4, 2012
The index gives publication, never force.

The record

Every mark on this record opens. Inside is what it means, and what it does not.

The fields

Class: Legislative decreedecreto_legislativo
What this isClose
What it is
The instrument's legal form. It is what settles its rank: who could issue it, what force it carries, and which higher norm it cannot contradict.
The class does not tell you the subject. A governmental agreement regulates a law and confers a decoration in exactly the same form.
More on this class
Number: 4-2012
What this isClose
What it is
The number the instrument is cited by: a serial and a year, “49-2023”. With the class it forms the instrument's name, and it is enough to request it at any office.
Where the index did not publish it, the record prints the document's identifier in the gazette and marks it as such. That identifier will get you to the document; it will not let you cite it.
Issuing authority: Congreso de la República
What this isClose
What it is
The name the index records as the issuing authority.
State in the archive: IN_FORCEThis is the state of the record inside the archive, not the state of the instrument inside the law.
What this isClose
What it is
“PUBLISHED” is the state of the row inside this archive: detection completed, the source recorded, the link resolving.
Issued: No date in the index
What this isClose
What it is
The date the index gives as the date of issue: the day the authority signed the instrument.
Days or months can pass between signature and publication, and in this register they do. The distance between the two is a fact about the procedure, not an error.
The archive does not hold this.
The index gave no date of issue for this row.
This is not a gap in the page: it is a gap in the source. The record says so instead of filling it, because filling it would be writing it.
Published: Feb 25, 2012
What this isClose
What it is
The date of the Diario de Centro América edition in which the source records this instrument as published. It is the only fact about time this index certifies.
Publishing is not signing and it is not entry into force. It is the act that makes a norm binding on everyone, and the one that starts the clock in article 180 of the Constitution.
In force: Mar 4, 2012
What this isClose
What it is
From when the instrument binds. This archive does not know and does not compute it.
Source: portal.sat.gob.gttier 1
What this isClose
What it is
The door this row came through, with the link to the document exactly as the source serves it.
Two sources feed this register and they fail in different ways. The record always says which one the row you are reading came through.
What this isClose
What it is
Tier 1 is the highest provenance this archive recognizes: the source is the official issuer of the datum or its gazette of record, not an intermediary repeating it.
The tier grades the chain, not the content. A tier 1 row can carry a broken title or an incomplete number — and in this register it does. It measures who the datum came from, not how well the issuer published it.
Archive id: #653
What this isClose
What it is
The row's identifier inside this archive.
It has no value outside these pages and is not cited. It is here so you can come back to this same row.

What this record does not say

The marks on this record

The subject matters of the instrument.
The index does not classify by subject. The column exists in the archive and is empty on all 679 rows: it fills the day the source publishes it, and not before.
Entry into force article by article, where an instrument staggers it.
Empty across the whole register, for the same reason the general commencement is: it takes the text of the instrument, and this archive has not read it.

Note kept with the record

Texto consolidado SAT (wp-file-download 18259), 53 páginas, 82 artículos; reforma el Código Tributario (6-91), la Ley del IVA (27-92), la Ley del ISR entonces vigente (26-92, hoy derogada por 10-2012) y otras. | captura: data/captures/sat_legal/manifest.json · decreto-4-2012-fortalecimiento-sistema-tributario.pdf · sha256 c16902357ce6f1f0…

Definition

How to read this record

Every field, every mark and the class of the instrument itself has its definition here. None of them describes this document: they describe the form it was issued in, and what the archive knows and does not know about it.

These definitions describe the legal form and the archive's own marks, not the document on this page. They rest on the Constitution of the Republic and the Executive Branch Law, cited by article. The archive has not read this instrument and does not say what it is about.

Avenida La Reforma seen from the air: the tree-lined boulevard running through Guatemala City, with the sierra closing the horizon. — Fering123 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The class of instrument

Legislative decree

Ordinary statute: enacted by the Congress of the Republic, and only another statute can amend it.

What it is

This is the act by which the Congress of the Republic legislates. The Constitution reserves to Congress the power to enact, amend and repeal laws (article 171(a)) and gives it the taxing power exclusively: only a decree of Congress can create a tax and set its taxable event, its base, its rate and its exemptions (article 239). Once published, no executive agreement may contradict it; a lower provision that distorts those bases is void by operation of law. Above it sit the Constitution and the treaties Congress ratifies. The codes, the Foreign Investment Law and the free-zone and maquila regimes all live in this form.

The register holds 24 of this class, out of 654 dated instruments detected. It is what detection has reached in the gazette, not the complete body of Guatemalan law.

What it can do

Enact, amend and repeal laws; create taxes and set the bases on which they are assessed; approve the treaties that bind the State; and authorize the budget.

What it cannot do

Contradict the Constitution. A law that violates or distorts a constitutional mandate is void ipso jure (article 175), and the Constitutional Court can strike it from the legal order.

Where it ranks

Below the Constitution and ratified treaties; above every agreement or decree of the executive.

Issued by

The Congress of the Republic

Where each form sits

No norm may contradict the one above it, and the Constitution says so without qualification: a law that violates or distorts a constitutional mandate is void by operation of law (article 175), and so is any governmental provision, of whatever order, that diminishes or restricts a right the Constitution guarantees (article 44).

Constitution of the Republic
Above everything. The Constitutional Court strikes down what contradicts it, and may provisionally suspend a challenged provision.
Ratified treaties and conventions
Congress approves them and they bind the State. On human rights the Constitution gives them precedence over domestic law (article 46); outside that field they are given the force of a statute, and the point is still argued.
Legislative decree
The ordinary statute, enacted by Congress. It is the only rung where a tax is born.
Governmental agreement and decree
Acts of the President. The agreement develops a law without exceeding it; the decree exercises a power the Constitution grants him directly.
Ministerial agreement
An act of a single ministry, valid within what a higher norm entrusted to it.

The order measures the force of each form, not the importance of any one document. A ministerial agreement setting fees can weigh more on an operating cost than a law that was never given its regulations.

Its place in the register

650

of 654 dated instruments, ordered from the most recent to the oldest.

25 further instruments are held out of that order: the index gave them no usable date.

By class

executive agreements621
legislative decrees24
ministerial agreements21
executive decrees10
acuerdo_legislativo2
constitucion1

instrument.classesNote

The same edition

The only instrument the archive detected in the edition of Feb 25, 2012.

Previous recordLegislative decree·10-2012·Mar 5, 2012Ley de Actualización Tributaria Next recordLegislative decree·73-2008·Dec 22, 2008Ley del Impuesto de Solidaridad

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