The SAT rejects the work of Melchor Peredo for payment in kind

At 99 years old, Melchor Peredo, author of 30 murals in Mexico, the United States and Paris, faces the refusal of the Tax Administration Service (SAT) to allow him to cover his taxes with pictorial work. The artist assures that after 40 years of complying with his contributions under this scheme endorsed by the State, they are now asking him to pay with a mural.

“I find it crazy, unfair, because it does not favor the production of murals in the country; on the contrary, they are taking a machete to Mexican muralism, which has just turned 100 years old,” the artist noted about this change in criteria.

According to Peredo, in 2024 he presented his declaration for the 2023 fiscal year, accompanied by the corresponding table for the payment of taxes and it was not until a year later, in 2025, that the authorities informed him that these should be covered with a mural work similar in technique and proportions to the sold asset.

For Peredo, the requirement is absurd because the work delivered has a value of 200 thousand pesos, and making another one with the same characteristics would imply doubling that amount, when the tax to be covered amounts to only 32 thousand pesos.

The same thing happened in his 2024 tax return, filed in April 2025, for the sale of a portrait for 30 thousand pesos. The SAT asked him to present a table of similar measures and techniques, “which would mean that instead of paying 4,800 pesos in tax, he would pay the value of the work.”

In a letter addressed to Emmanuel Díaz Martínez, deputy administrator of Payment in Kind of the General Administration of Resources and Services of the SAT, the painter warns that this measure “exceeds the amount I must pay for my works, in addition to the fact that there are no modifications to the decree that grants facilities for the payment of taxes to people dedicated to the plastic arts, after the 2017 reform.”

Peredo reiterated that the request for one mural for another is unfair because its creation is a long and complex process, which involves one to five years of work, the hiring of assistants – for whom insurance must be provided –, the advice of an architect to take care of the aesthetic integration with the property and a production cost much higher than the amount of the tax.

For the artist, the new SAT instructions “minimize the cultural and aesthetic value of the works, considering them an object and not bearers of culture.”

As a result of this conflict, in the last quarter of 2025 Peredo withdrew from the Payment in Kind program and does not intend to maintain exceptional treatment, but reiterated the call to the authorities to abandon this provision, so that the existence of payment in kind with paintings and not necessarily murals can continue to be considered.

“Unfair and not very humane”

Guillermina Guadarrama Peña, researcher at the National Center for Research and Documentation of Plastic Arts of Inbal, said that “the case of Maestro Peredo seems deeply unfair and not very humane to me. It is not reasonable to require him to pay 100 percent of the tax with a work of the same dimensions and technique, when that implies a production cost much higher than the amount owed.”

He considered that the SAT should review the Payment in Kind agreements and update them to expand their benefit in favor of artists, such as establishing a clause that considers the age and real conditions of the creators.

He highlighted that several of them have avoided signing the Payment in Kind agreement, while paradoxically the Treasury boasts of its cultural heritage.

The Day He looked for a representative of the General Administration of Resources and Services of the SAT to find out their position on the matter; However, at the time of this edition they did not respond.

Peredo is originally from Mexico City (1927), where he studied at the San Carlos Academy, the La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, and the School of Book Arts and the Mural Painting Materials Testing Workshop, founded by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the National Polytechnic Institute.

Although he has work in various parts of the country, most of his artistic work has been done in Veracruz. Among its most notable pieces are Slavery, fragment of the mural Heroic resistance of the Veracruz people against the invasions (1979-1980), located in the government palace of the state of Veracruz, as well as The revolutionary tragedy y The Xalapa insurgent heroine María Theresa Medina de la Soto Rivaboth from the mural A continuous revolution (2010), in the lobby of the Xalapa town hall; The forgemural detail This is what this shipyard was like (2012), installed in the Atarazanas Cultural Center, in the port of Veracruz.

Among his works abroad is the piece Isadora Duncanfrom the mural ensemble Cultural Heritage (1999), which is located at Southern Arkansas University, in the United States, in addition to a series of murals at the University of Paris XII (Paris-Est Créteil), where he received the University Medal for his artistic contribution.

Over seven decades, Peredo has combined his work with teaching, research and dissemination of Mexican muralism, giving conferences and workshops in various countries. In 2025, the Veracruz Ministry of Culture paid tribute to him for his outstanding career.