Responsible for 70% of the wealth produced in the country, the service sector fears paying the tax reform bill

Specialist in institutional and governmental relations at the National Confederation of Shopkeepers (CNDL), lawyer Karoline Lima says that the approval of the reform is positive because Brazil needs to simplify the system for collecting taxes on consumption. In addition, she celebrates that several segments received different treatment in the text.

However, he says that trade and service businessmen are concerned about the increase in taxes on the sector, discomfort that grows with the lack of definition of the rate of the new tax that will fall on goods and services. “(The rate) will remain for the text of the complementary law and there is no guideline for us to be able to make a calculation margin. The shopkeeper wants to know how much he pays today and how much he will pay with this text that is in place. And we there is no response from the rapporteur, there is no response from the government”, he complains.

Despite the uncertainty, she says it’s clear the industry will end up paying more tax than it currently does. “They say that they will not increase the tax burden, but when we put it at the tip of the pencil, the projection of the burden that exists today, how much the services pay and how much the projection will bring in increase, it makes us worried Our fear is precisely this: it is clear that there will be this increase for our segment”, he points out.

For André Felix Ricotta de Oliveira, doctor in tax law, the discussion around the reform was rushed. According to him, it would be necessary for the complementary laws that will come after the possible approval of the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) 45/2019 to be already available so that the real impact of the changes could be measured.

“In the speech, the politicians say ‘we are going to relieve the productive chain and we are going to increase the taxation of income and wealth’. This is the ideal model. We would know if this is true if the tax reform of the income tax was presented. And it wasn’t. It’s a total lack of transparency. There’s going to be a reform on consumption already raising the rate for service providers. Then there’s going to be an income tax reform, which nobody guarantees that if you raise the income tax rate later it will reduce the rate of taxation on consumption”, criticizes the president of the Tax Law Commission of the OAB-SP.

The final consumer will be the most affected in the event of an increase in the tax burden on the service sector, recalls Guilherme Di Ferreira, deputy director of the Tax Law Commission of the OAB-GO. “Today, a service provider who is paying around 5% tax will start paying 25% tax. So, he will have an increase of more than 20 percentage points in his service provision. to the final consumer”.

Karoline Lima, from the CNDL, says that if there is an increase in the tax burden, businessmen will have to pass on the costs to the price of products and services, which, in the end, harms the entire economy. “When the tax price increases, the consumer will not continue buying the same quantities and the final value is higher”, she warns.

According to Karoline, even so the text approved by the Chamber brought several important advances for the sector. In addition to goods and services related to health, education, transport, artistic and cultural activities, the rapporteur Aguinaldo Ribeiro (PP-PB) includes the segments of hotels, amusement parks, theme parks, restaurants and regional aviation among those that will have lower rates than the standard rate.

Chamber of Deputies approves bill of tax reform in two rounds