SENIAT: Venezuela collects 37.6% more in dollars and 25.8% more in real terms

It was 1,003,772 million bolívares, which the agency converts into $1.198 billion. Two-thirds, about $810 million, came from domestic taxes, VAT and income tax among them; about $366 million from customs; and about $22 million from the large financial transactions tax. Against August the total is up 13%, and against September 2025, 37.6%. Both changes are in dollars: in bolívares, the year-on-year rise exceeds 600%.

The official one. Dividing the bolívares by the dollars SENIAT publishes gives a rate of 837.87 bolívares per dollar in September, between the central bank's two monthly averages — by trade date and by value date. The same holds in August and in the two 2025 months the agency uses as a base, and all three lines are converted at the same rate. The central bank in fact publishes that rate to calculate "the obligations provided for in the Organic Customs Law and the Organic Tax Code."

In dollars, yes. Net of inflation, less. The bolívares collected in September are 7.1 times those of September 2025, and prices rose 5.7 times over the same span, according to the central bank's index: real growth is 25.8%.

The difference comes from the official dollar rising less than prices, 5.1 times against 5.7. In real terms it got cheaper, and anything measured in official dollars looks bigger than it is. In May and June the effect was more visible than in September: collection rose 12% and 9% in dollars while falling in real terms, by about 1% and 2%.

No. March, the month when income tax payments are concentrated, came to about 724,000 million bolívares, of which about 431,000 million were from that tax. At March's average official rate that is about $1.611 billion, more than September.

The series has gaps. SENIAT did not publish April — a PwC review leaves it out "due to the absence of official information" — and the July report, the month of the handover at the top of the agency, does not appear in any of the sources reviewed. With the seven months that are known, and with our conversion at the average official rate where SENIAT gives no dollar figure, 2026 is running 23.9% above the same months of 2025.

Román Maniglia was appointed on July 7, according to the decree cited in the Official Gazette, with the task of digitizing tax collection. With him the way of counting changed too. Until June, SENIAT published its report in bolívares and separated VAT, income tax, customs and other revenue. Since August it publishes in bolívares and in dollars, by broad lines — domestic taxes and customs, and in September also the transactions tax — with year-on-year changes in dollars.

The new format reads better in dollars and worse by tax. It is no longer possible to tell how much of the rise comes from VAT, which follows consumption, and how much from income tax, which follows profits.

Customs brought in about $366 million in September, 46% more than a year earlier in dollar terms, and is now close to a third of collection. The rise coincides with a jump in purchases abroad: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. exports to Venezuela reached about $3.46 billion between January and July, more than in all of 2025, and in July they were almost three times the same month a year earlier. That is only part of what Venezuela imports, but it points in the same direction as customs.

It is not on record. The OFAC licenses that allow dealing with PDVSA require every payment to a blocked person — the government or PDVSA — to be deposited in the U.S. Treasury funds created by Executive Order 14,373, except local taxes, permits and fees. OFAC's FAQ 1237 spells it out: royalties, per-barrel levies and federal taxes go to the fund.

If a licensed operator pays its income tax that way, the money does not pass through SENIAT the way a supermarket chain's does. The agency's releases do not say whether their totals include any oil tax.

For scale: 2025 closed at about $10.1 billion, according to PwC's conversion, below the roughly $12.1 billion the government had announced for 2024. The seven known months of 2026 add up to about $7.57 billion. September alone is worth about 12% of everything collected in 2025.

The October report, in early November, will show whether September's pace holds. The price index for the same month will show whether the official dollar keeps rising less than prices, which is what inflates the dollar measure. And if SENIAT does publish April and July, the year's series will stop being compared with gaps.