Companies that use tax credits (taxes paid more along the production chain to pay less tax) will have changes in the way the remaining balance is corrected. The Federal Revenue has prohibited the incidence of interest on interest in tax compensation, reducing the amount that entrepreneurs can deduct in future taxes.
The change consists of Query Solution 24/2022 Edited by the General Coordination of Taxation of the Federal Revenue a month ago, the measure was published only today (14) in the Official Diary of the Union.
The change will mainly affect companies that enable, at once, in the Federal Revenue system, tax credits recognized in court, but reduce taxes gradually. The remaining balance of credit that has not yet been used to reduce taxes is corrected by the Selic rate (basic interest in the economy) during the five years in which the abatement can be made.
A company that judicially contests a charge from the Federal Revenue has the balance of the tax credit corrected by the Selic from the moment it filed the action until the final decision of the Court. In addition to the update, there was a second correction of the balance at the time of offsetting (when the tax credit is used to deduct future taxes).
Until now, the second correction applied to the entire remaining balance (which was left over after tax offsets). With the change, the new update by Selic starts to focus only on the principal amount, the volume of tax credit at the time the company filed a lawsuit in court.
Simulation
In terms of values, if a company applied for R$4 million in tax credit in court in 2015 and won the case in 2020, it was entitled to deduct R$6.366 million in taxes, equivalent to the accumulated Selic rate of 59.16% in that period. When offsetting R$500,000 the first time, R$5.866 million remained.
In 2021, the same company decided to slaughter another R$ 500 thousand. By the method used so far, the remaining balance of BRL 5.866 million would be updated to BRL 6.014 million, equivalent to the Selic rate of 2.53% accumulated between 2020 and 2021. With the decision of the Revenue, the new correction will apply only to the original R$ 4 million, resulting in a total balance of R$ 5.967 million that the company may not pay in taxes.
The decision will mainly affect companies that have won the right to exclude the Tax on the Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS) from the calculation basis of the Social Integration Program (PIS) and the Contribution to the Financing of Social Security (Cofins). Judged by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in 2017, the process only had the defined range last year, when the Court ruled that the ICMS withdrawal applies only to charges from 2017 onwards.
According to the Brazilian Institute of Tax Planning (IBPT), Brazilian companies have gained the right to deduct up to R$358 billion in future taxes. The Federal Revenue’s decision reduces the adjustment of this amount by the Selic.
