On the night of this Friday (11), President Jair Bolsonaro sanctioned, in full, the Complementary Law Project (PLP) No. ICMS) on fuels, including imported ones. The single ICMS will also apply to natural gas and jet fuel. The sanction was published in an extra edition of the Official Diary of the Union.
Currently, the tax rate is a percentage charged on top of the final price of the liter at the pump, which undergoes variations in the dollar and in the international price, further burdening the final amount charged to consumers. The sanctioned PL determines that ICMS is charged on the price at the refinery or at the import counter, when the fuel comes from abroad. The new values, by the proposal, will be defined through the National Council of Finance Policy (Confaz), which brings together representatives of the economic area of all states and the Federal District.
Diesel is the only fuel that would adopt an emergency transition rule. According to this system, while the single charge – and corresponding unification of the rate – of diesel is not adopted, the reference value for stipulating the tax will be the moving average of the average prices charged to the final consumer in the 60 months prior to its establishment.
In defining the new rates, a minimum interval of 12 months must be provided between the first setting and the first readjustment of these rates and of six months for subsequent readjustments, with a period of 90 days being observed in the case of a new increase.
The measure also reduces the rates of Contribution to PIS/Pasep and Cofins and Contribution to PIS/Pasep-Import and Cofins-Import to zero, guaranteeing the maintenance of credits linked to legal entities in the production chain.
In this way, the proposition not only preserves the autonomy of the states and the Federal District, but also simplifies the levy of ICMS on fuels and lubricants, confers greater uniformity and dilutes the weight of the tax burden levied on these products to face the sudden increase in the oil from the war in Ukraine.
