The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, rejected the order of the Constitutional Court of Colombia to return approximately US$6.9 million collected through taxes created during the economic emergency declared in December. According to the president, that money was never actually collected, so “there is nothing to return.”
The head of state’s response comes after the high court’s ruling that struck down the emergency decree and ordered the reimbursement of resources obtained under that framework. The controversy opens a clash between the Court’s legal interpretation and the Government’s fiscal reading of what actually entered public coffers.
It is worth recalling that the issuance of the economic emergency decree responded to a government strategy to try to increase state revenue, following Congress’s rejection of the latest tax reform, proposed to balance Colombia’s growing public deficit.
After the judicial annulment of the economic emergency, Colombia faces a serious deficit problem, in an election year and with international organizations warning about the future economic consequences of rising debt.
Petro rejects refunding taxes collected after Court ruling in Colombia
The Court’s decision rendered ineffective one of the instruments the Executive had used to ease pressure on public finances. The annulled decree had established extraordinary taxes, including increases in VAT on certain products and specific levies on economic sectors, under the exceptional powers of the economic emergency.
The court not only declared the measure unconstitutional, but also ordered the return of the resources collected during the time it was in force. In practical terms, this implies that the State must identify the payments made under that framework and proceed with their reimbursement, a task that falls mainly to the tax authority.
However, the real scope of that order is not entirely clear. Part of the resources associated with these taxes may not be subject to reimbursement, either because they were not fully consolidated or because they fall within legal situations that have already become final.
In this context, President Petro was emphatic in rejecting the central premise of the ruling. As he explained, the taxes contemplated in the decree did not translate into effective revenue before the measure was suspended and later annulled.
“The taxes struck down by the Court from the economic emergency were not collected. So there is nothing to return. Only payments from old DIAN debtors were obtained, who benefited from tax breaks. The mechanism ended up being suspended by the Constitutional Court,” the president wrote yesterday on his account on the social media platform X.
With this, Petro maintained that, although the tax provisions formally existed, in practice they did not generate concrete revenue for the State. From this perspective, the order to refund would lack an object, since there would be no resources to return.
The statement introduces a key nuance in the discussion. While the Court starts from the validity of the rule to order reimbursement, the Government emphasizes the actual flow of money, suggesting that the application of the decree was limited or even nonexistent in terms of revenue collection.
Los impuestos que tumba la Corte de la emergencia económica no se cobraron. Así que no hay nada que devolver.
Solo se logró los pagos de deudores antiguos de la DIAN que lograron beneficios tributarios. El mecanismo terminó suspendido por la Corte Constitucional. https://t.co/YTqjsu3KRY
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) April 15, 2026
Between legal principles and fiscal reality
The clash between the two positions reflects a structural tension between the legal design of decisions and their practical implementation. For the Court, the principle is clear: any tax collected under an unconstitutional rule must be refunded. But the Executive disputes that this assumption has actually materialized.
Beyond the amount in dispute, the episode once again has implications for the credibility of the Government’s fiscal policy. The annulment of the decree weakens one of the tools that was intended to increase revenues in a context of tight budget constraints.
At the same time, the ruling reinforces the role of the court as an institutional counterweight to the use of exceptional powers. The decision sends a message about the limits of the economic emergency as a mechanism for introducing tax changes.
The discussion now shifts to the operational realm. Even if the Court’s order is accepted, its implementation poses significant technical challenges, especially in the case of indirect taxes, where identifying the affected taxpayers can be complex.
In this context, the president’s position could anticipate a restrictive interpretation of the ruling by the Government, based on the idea that there was no effective collection. This, however, could lead to new litigation if it is demonstrated that payments did in fact exist, even if they were partial or temporary.
What is at stake is not only the refund of a few million dollars, but the way in which the Colombian State aligns its economic decisions with constitutional oversight. A tension that, far from being resolved, appears destined to persist in an electoral context that does not suggest the kind of agreements that are necessarily political in nature.