Keeping a Foreign Company Compliant in Argentina: What the IGJ Now Requires

Registering a foreign company in Argentina is the beginning of the obligation, not the end of it. What happens afterwards — the filings, the deadlines, the supervision — is where most groups quietly fall out of compliance, usually without noticing until they need to register something urgently and discover they cannot.

During 2026 the Inspección General de Justicia issued ten general resolutions that rewrote how foreign companies file and stay compliant. Most of them removed obligations. One of them opened a window that closes on 31 December 2026. Here is what still applies, what no longer does, and what to do before the year ends.

A year of deregulation, in sequence

The 2026 resolutions follow a deliberate arc: first substantive requirements, then process, then digitalisation.

• RG 1/26 clarified that the registration of corporate officers is declarative, guaranteed continuity of administrators until effectively replaced, and simplified the guarantee regime.
• RG 2/26 opened a public consultation procedure, inviting practitioners to identify what in the existing rules was generating cost without control.
• RG 3/26 simplified the regime for appointing and removing administrators, remote meetings and pre-qualification opinions.
• RG 4/26 rewrote the regime for foreign companies — the subject of our note on choosing between a branch and a subsidiary.
• RG 5/26, 7/26, 9/26 and 10/26 moved filing, financial statements and official notifications onto digital rails, including a new online platform for submitting and tracking filings.
• RG 6/26 extended a moratorium for overdue accounting filings. That is the deadline worth diarising.

What the registry stopped supervising

The most consequential change for branches is not in the registration requirements. It is in what the IGJ no longer polices.

General Resolution 4/2026 repealed the entire framework governing the net worth of branches of foreign companies. Gone with it are the registry’s active verification that a branch maintained positive net worth, the formal demand-and-cancellation procedure that followed a negative net worth, and the prohibition on registering a capital assignment where the parent carried unabsorbed accumulated losses.

The resolution also repealed the provisions that allowed the IGJ to compel a foreign company to convert into a local entity under Article 124 of the Companies Act by formal demand.

Two cautions follow, and they matter more than the relief does.

First, Article 124 itself has not gone anywhere. A foreign company whose seat is in Argentina, or whose principal corporate purpose is performed here, is still treated as a local company. What disappeared is one enforcement mechanism, not the substantive rule — and the rule can still be raised by a creditor, a counterparty or a court.

Second, the registry stepping back from net worth supervision does not make an undercapitalised branch safe. It makes it invisible to the regulator while remaining fully exposed to creditors, who never needed the IGJ’s help to sue.

What still applies

Deregulation has been read, in some quarters, as an amnesty. It is not. The following obligations are intact:

• Branch financial statements must be filed within 120 calendar days of the fiscal year-end.
• Beneficial ownership and politically exposed person declarations were expressly preserved. The registry removed formalities, not anti-money-laundering controls.
• A registered legal representative must be in place, and under Article 121 of the Companies Act that person carries the same responsibilities the law imposes on company administrators.
• Registration must be current for the local company to function. Where a foreign shareholder’s votes were decisive, the resulting corporate resolutions cannot be registered until the shareholder’s own registration is evidenced.
• Companies from non-cooperative or FATF high-risk jurisdictions continue to be assessed restrictively and may be asked for supplementary documentation.

The deadline: 31 December 2026 ⚠️

RG 6/26 extended the moratorium for filing overdue balance sheets and accounting documentation until 31 December 2026, enabled digital filing from 1 July 2026, and widened the scope to financial statements closing on 30 June 2026.

If your Argentine branch has unfiled financial statements — and a surprising number of long-established branches do, having drifted through years of management changes — this is the window to regularise them at a lower cost and through a digital process. It is a defined window, not a permanent state of affairs.

Concrete legal risks ⚠️

An urgent filing gets stuck. This is the practical failure mode. A group needs to appoint a new representative, register a capital increase or close a transaction, and discovers that accounting filings are overdue. The remedy takes weeks the transaction does not have.

The legal representative cannot get out. Where a representative resigns and the parent never formally addresses the resignation, the new procedure requires ninety days’ notice and — critically — that the entity be current on its financial statements before the resignation can be registered. An individual can find themselves formally responsible for a company they no longer serve.

Article 124 re-characterisation. Structures whose real centre of activity is Argentine remain exposed, notwithstanding that the registry has given up its power to compel adequacy on its own initiative.

Stale registrations. Registrations made under earlier, heavier regimes often carry outdated representatives, superseded documentation and beneficial ownership declarations that no longer reflect the group. Nothing forces a review — until something does.

What to do before year end 📌

• Audit the registration file. Confirm the registration is current, the registered representative is the person you think it is, and the beneficial ownership declaration matches today’s group structure.
• Check for overdue accounting filings and use the moratorium window while it is open.
• Calendar the 120-day deadline against your actual fiscal year-end and assign it to a named person, not to a department.
• Review whether the representative still wants the role, and whether the powers granted still match what the business needs.
• Reassess Article 124 exposure if the Argentine operation has grown into the group’s real centre of activity for that business line.
• Register for the digital filing platform rather than waiting to be migrated mid-transaction.

The strategic view

Argentina spent several years making foreign registration expensive and slow, and has spent 2026 undoing that. The direction is clear and, for incoming investors, welcome.

The risk in a deregulatory cycle is a different one. When a regulator stops checking, non-compliance stops being visible — and the exposure migrates from a registry file to a courtroom, where it is discovered later and costs more. The groups that will benefit most from this window are the ones that treat it as a chance to clean up, not as permission to stop paying attention.

If your company already operates in Argentina through a branch or a local subsidiary and the registration file has not been reviewed in some years, talk to our team. We handle registration audits, representative changes and ongoing corporate compliance for foreign groups.