The special secretary of the Federal Revenue, Robinson Barreirinhas, announced some new measures to avoid or resolve tax disputes in the country. The idea is to enable the construction of consensus and solutions, by expanding possibilities and tools for direct dialogue between taxpayers and Revenue.
To this end, two ordinances were published in the Official Gazette of the Union this Tuesday (1st). One establishes the Consensus Recipeand the other, the Recipe Solutions.
“These two ordinances take a very important step on the Federal Revenue’s path to becoming a guiding federal revenue that solves taxpayers’ problems; which is a partner with Brazilian taxpayers in the development of the country”, explained Barreirinhas by remembering that, since last year, no inspection operations have been launched by the Revenue.
According to the secretary, the IRS’s efforts have been much more aimed at guiding taxpayers to solve their problems, rather than punishing them. “What we had were major guidance and self-regulation operations, in order to bring the taxpayer into compliance, in order to avoid litigation and resolve doubts and pending issues”, he added.
To this end, communication channels were opened with confederations representing economic categories, trade unions and class entities nationwide.
Consensus Recipe
The Consensus Revenue is, according to the secretary, “something revolutionary” by creating, in the Revenue, something similar to an ombudsman, to defend the taxpayer, in the search for solutions.
“A taxpayer who is under some supervision and has any doubts needs dialogue channels that build consensus. There, it will have a body within the Federal Revenue itself, but distinct from the inspection body. It will be possible to consider the debate between the taxpayer and the supervisory body, for example”, he explained.
Barreirinhas adds that this procedure will be done voluntarily, and that no taxpayer will be punished if they do not want to participate in it. “It’s just an opening, so that the taxpayer has someone to access, other than the inspector.”
Recipe Solutions
Revenue Soluciona will be a communication channel for entities to “increasingly become partners with the Federal Revenue Service”, helping to avoid the emergence of disputes.
“We have a very large volume of queries that are made individually by taxpayers. They are and will be answered with all the criteria, expertise and excellence of the Federal Revenue Service. If we want to improve this relationship with taxpayers, we need to speed this up, and the way we are looking to speed this up is to make use of these partner entities”, said the secretary when referring to confederations, unions and professional associations nationwide.
According to Barreirinhas, these entities will filter, in order to function as a first dialogue with members.
From there, they select the questions that deserve priority attention and then use this direct channel with the Federal Revenue Service to define which solutions will be the priority.
