The incorporation of the approximately R$ 8.56 billion forgotten in the financial system to the National Treasury accounts does not represent confiscation of resources, the Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom) clarified on Friday night (13). In a note, the agency highlighted that the owners of the resources will be able to request withdrawal, even after incorporation.
THE transfer of resources to the National Treasury is included in the project that compensates for the extension of the payroll tax exemption for 17 sectors of the economy and 156 municipalities, definitively approved by the Chamber of Deputies on Thursday (12). The R$8.56 billion will make up the R$55 billion that will enter the government’s coffers to cover the extension of the benefit.
In the statement, Secom highlighted that the provision for incorporation of these resources by the National Treasury has been provided for in legislation for over 70 years, through the Law 2,313 of 1954. The text clarifies that, unlike a traditional confiscation, citizens will be able to claim forgotten amounts.
The Ministry of Finance, Secom reported, will publish an announcement in the Official Gazette of the Union with information on the amounts to be received. The collection may be contested by those who are entitled.
Accounting
The Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance disagree on how to account for forgotten amounts. For the Central Bank, the transfer of forgotten amounts to the Treasury does not represent a fiscal effort because it does not result in savings of government resources, but of money from account holders. Haddad says that there are precedents that allow the inclusion of the R$8.5 billion left aside in the financial system in the fiscal target of a zero primary deficit for 2024.
Last Wednesday (11), the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, reported that there is precedent which allows the inclusion of R$8.5 billion to reinforce the National Treasury accounts. The minister cited the case of the R$26.3 billion stopped in the former PIS/Pasep fund.
At the end of 2022, the constitutional amendment for the transition authorized the transfer of the money to the National Treasury. The Treasury believes that the money reinforced the government’s cash flow in 2023, but the Central Bank did not recognize the amount, which led to the biggest divergence between the statistics of the two agencies in history.
