IVA is Mexico's value-added tax and retención is the portion of it a corporate customer withholds when paying a trucking company. Domestic Mexican freight quotes read 'más IVA, menos retención,' mechanics that require a Mexican tax presence to process.
IVA (Impuesto al Valor Agregado) is Mexico's value-added tax, applied at a standard rate of 16 percent. Retención is withholding: when a Mexican corporate customer (persona moral) pays a trucking company, tax law requires it to withhold a slice of the IVA, 4 percent of the freight amount under the autotransporte rule, and remit it to the SAT on the carrier's behalf. This is why a domestic Mexican freight quote sounds like an incantation: 'diez mil más IVA, menos retención.' The quoted rate, plus 16 percent IVA, minus the 4 percent withholding, all flowing through the carrier's CFDI.
For U.S. brokers, the IVA/retención machinery is the concrete reason you cannot simply buy domestic Mexican freight the way you buy a Dallas to Houston truckload. Processing these flows requires a Mexican tax identity: an RFC, CFDI capability, and the accounting to handle withheld taxes. Cross-border freight is structured differently, with the international transport component receiving distinct IVA treatment, which is one of several reasons cross-border and domestic-Mexico trucking operate as separate commercial worlds. Practical guidance: when a Mexican carrier quotes you, confirm whether the number is before or after IVA, and never compare a Mexican domestic quote to a U.S. quote without normalizing the tax mechanics. If your growth plan includes buying domestic Mexican capacity at scale, the real conversation is about entity structure, not rates.
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