The magical "Clave de Identificación"

The Argentine Clave de Identificación, or in more common parlance tax id (not quite a SSN but in practice used quite similarly) is something you need if you wish to purchase property in Argentina. Or to open a bank accountⁱ. Or so forth.

Consequently, here it is, in all its splendor :

Don't ask me why it's not signed or filled in, I don't decide these things. Notice that they do in fact confirm that I'm male (although where I come from 2 is traditionally the lead digit for females, in eternal memorialization of the plain fact that females are second rate citizens), and also not dead yet (though diligent as any serious bureaucracy, they do include a field for that certain if yet unoccurred event).

To obtain this magical bit of paper, oh so different in relevant and important ways from all the other practically identical bits of paper, one has open before them two avenues, provided that one's sufficiently anchored in reality to actually have any avenues at all.

The first, and most common, is to retain in some sort of manner a domicile, such as for instance by begging a real estate owner to write you a piece of paper saying you may stay there. Then, armed with this incontrovertible piece of evidence, to go sit in line at the local police precinct, wherein to beg the nice policemen to come visit you at your house, which they will do, some day. Usually they have a day set aside in the week for this, so if you ask Thursday and they do Wednesdays you'll be waiting six days for the fortunate event to occur (presuming they even bother to show up, as opposed to simply ticking the "not at home" box en masse and go have a beer / furrow the girlfriends' fields / etc). In any event, this is not unlike waiting for the cable guy to come hook your cable - inconvenient, but people have been known to do it.

The second, and more expensive, is to retain a (competent) lawyer, who will then tell you one day that you need to do this, and ask you to drop by his office to sign a Contracto de Comodato so you may acquire a domicile in the place they keep aside for this very purpose, at which juncture you point out to him that you already have ample rental contracts duly executed all over the damned town, to which they tell you that fine, bring one to the Escribano, who is a sort of notary except here they have to go to school, and then pay a huge bribe for the spot (which, I hear, is quite lucrative).

Once there, you are issued a Certificacion de Domicilio, which is an even further magical and very important DISTINCT! piece of paper. Like so :

The drawback of course is that this thing costs 1`200 pesos, which at the official rate comes to about 150 dollars. Yes, that's right, a 150 dollar notarization fee, for a document which is then sufficient proof for the matter in question, and together with the very perky tits directly visible through a very nicely cut decolletage in the very sexy business suit of the fashionable lowly but young (and tall) clerk at the offices of the Administracion Fiscal (de la Nacion!) you will be able to create the magical (but distinct! and relevant!) piece of paper quoted supra, the point of the entire exercise. Which you can then at your leisure use as a sufficient and most importantly legal!!! basis for the request and issuance (usually for a fee) of further (distinct! important!) pieces of paper, which in turn...

The entire exercise begins at half past noon at the tax offices in question, to make sure they actually want the domicile nonsense (because yes, that's how it works here, they might as well have decided not to need it that day), from whence you proceed to the offices of your lawyer's delegated notary public, who wants to "set an appointment"ⁱⁱ for 3 PM, which is cute seeing how the tax office closes at 4, and even if it's only a block away, these people can't be trusted with times, especially not in the shape of deadlines.

So you proceed to the offices of your own notary, who proceeds to do it on the spot, they send a girly to chase you around town for four blocks to see you open the door to your own place, which you do, showing the horrified but English speaking twentysomething in her best impersonation of a business attire and demeanor the pile of curls and other body parts of the girls that exhausted you over the night, then close the door, explain that "girls need to sleep more than men", take the magic thing, go to the tax office, admire their "system" breaking down mid operation, obtain the clerk's phone number under the guise of, you know, whatever, admire their "system" coming back online meanwhile and then leaving with the magical other paper, around two PM.

Time for lunch. Good luck to you too!

PS. Don't be poor. From what I hear, it sucks.

1. Which you don't really want to do anyway, seeing how any incoming funds will be transformed to their local scrap paper at the official rate (currently, that's roughly a 50% penalty - and it may well get worse). [↩]
2. They're fucking nuts with the appointments here, I don't think I've seen idler, more pretentious derps anywhere in the world, Switzerland's got nothing on this place. They will literally not take street traffic. No matter what. Because they're motherfucking insane. [↩]