Federal Revenue Secretary: ancillary tax obligations will end
“In the same way that today there is no need to fill in all the fields on the Individual Income Tax declaration, very soon this will not be necessary for the legal entity. I go beyond what the project says: I talk about ending accessory obligations. This is not science fiction. It is an inevitable advance of things, but we have to make this advance very carefully”, said Barreirinhas during a session in the Senate that debated the Complementary Law Project (PLP) 178/2021, which establishes the National Statute for the Simplification of Accessory Tax Obligations.
According to the secretary, the Federal Revenue already has models that would make it possible to end accessory obligations, but this advance must be “cautious”, as the agency handles data from millions of citizens and companies. “In the future, the citizen buys a product or takes a service provided and that operation is registered and that’s it. The systems will capture this information from this sales receipt and bring this information to the receipts”.
Barreirinhas said that the Revenue Service supports the PLP and believes that the proposal can be important to reduce the complexity of the tax system.
Simplification
Baptized mini-tax reform, the supplementary bill aims to simplify compliance with so-called ancillary tax obligations by taxpayers, such as invoices and declarations. They are called accessory because they revolve around the main obligation, which is the payment of tax.
The text proposes the creation of the Nota Fiscal Brasil Eletrônica (NFB-e), which would be valid for the sale of products and the provision of services throughout the country. It is estimated that there are more than a thousand different service invoice formats, in addition to nine types of electronic documents. The proposal also provides for the Digital Tax Declaration (DFD), a document that will gather information on federal, state and municipal taxes from the unification of the databases of the Federal Treasury and other federated entities.
Author of the project, Senator Efraim Filho (União-PB) said that the project dialogues with real problems that the productive sector faces on a daily basis. “It didn’t leave the offices for the streets. It left the streets for the offices. It was thought, discussed and proposed by those who have expertise at the end: by productive sectors, by entrepreneurs, by those who have expertise in information technologies, in means of automating payments and then it came to the offices.”
Efraim Filho pointed out that the text is “daring” and received praise from the productive sector. “We live in one of the most complex tax systems in the world and simplifying is what many people want. I got to talk to some sectors of the economy who said: ‘this project means more to us than the discussion of tax reform. We did simulations that they say that the cost reduction that can be achieved by putting it into action surpasses the discussion of rates in the tax reform’.”
The tax vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Technology for Commerce and Services (Afrac), Paulo Castro, highlighted that honoring taxes is the second biggest obstacle that Brazilian companies face. He highlighted figures from the Custo Brasil that point out that the productive sector loses BRL 310 billion per year just to deal with the difficulties of the current system.
“There are two major battlefronts. The issue of gigantic tax reform, perhaps the biggest mountain to be climbed and it is being addressed, but, in parallel to that, there is the second issue, which is how do I calculate and pay the tax due. These are the ancillary obligations, that is the project. If we were to compare the savings potential in these R$ 310 billion, we can say that the ancillary obligations, by themselves, represent a lot of money. We are talking about at least R$ $110 billion at the most conservative estimates,” he detailed.
Paulo Castro highlighted that the National Congress needs to approve the PLP, as it can contribute to making Brazilian companies more competitive, by reducing costs and time dedicated to fulfilling ancillary obligations.
Procedure
The supplementary bill has already passed through the Chamber of Deputies and was approved by the Senate Economic Affairs Committee (CAE). Now, it awaits deliberation of the plenary of the house.
“Mini tax reform” wants to simplify and reduce the costs of ancillary tax obligations for companies
By Brasil 61
