Learn to avoid the main mistakes when declaring income tax

The taxpayer gained more time to organize documents and settle accounts with the lion. The delivery of the income tax declaration was extended until May 31 by the Federal Revenue. However, it is important that everyone is aware to avoid errors in the declaration.

THE CNN Brasil Business consulted José Carlos Fernandes da Fonseca, national supervisor of the Income Tax Program to clarify the main mistakes made by taxpayers when filling in the IR information.

More attention

According to Fonseca, most of the errors can be summarized by “lack of attention”. He explains that many taxpayers, when entering the values ​​of documents, “make a mistake, inverting numbers, adding an incorrect CPF or CNPJ, or putting inverted values”.

Therefore, as this is information that will be confronted with data from third parties, these errors generate divergences that, in turn, cause the declaration to be withheld and the taxpayer to be summoned to justify the differences.

Fonseca recommends that the best thing to do is “fill in with caution, carefully observing the proof of income, if a particular medical expense is really that individual, if the amounts are correct, among others”.

previous income

Many of the withheld statements are due to incorrect information. Among the most common errors in this regard, Fonseca mentions the absence of income obtained by the taxpayer in the previous year.

“In some cases, the person works in a company all their lives, so they always remember to declare the income received there. But you forget to declare income from any other freelance work you did that year, for example.”

He explains that this lack of information makes the declaration “fall into omission of income” and, once again, the taxpayer will have to justify himself.

Dependent income

Another common mistake occurs when the taxpayer forgets to inform the dependent’s own income, which was also obtained in the previous year.

Fonseca says that many include the dependents, but they forget specific jobs that that individual performed.

“This situation is very common with children. For example, when the teenager did some paid internship or participates in some program, receiving income”, she explains.

Deduction of extracurricular courses

The income tax deduction is something much desired by taxpayers. However, not all expenses fall under the rules for the deduction. A frequent mistake among is the attempt to deduct extracurricular courses.

“It is very common to try to deduct from income tax language courses, art courses, among others. Many that were carried out during the pandemic. Extracurricular courses cannot be used for income tax deduction, although they can be declared”, says the specialist.

Non-taxpayer expenses

Situations where the use of expenses that are not the specific taxpayer of a certain declaration is also a common mistake.

“The individual decides to pay for a niece’s health insurance. In this case, he cannot use this expense as a reduction in the declaration, since his niece is not a dependent. Only personal expenses or those of dependents can be used”, explains Fonseca.

Recommendation

Fonseca recommends that taxpayers use the pre-filled declaration, a novelty this year, which, according to him, brings practicality and helps to avoid some filling errors.

“I advise you to use the pre-filled declaration to avoid having to enter all the data, they will all come filled in this modality. This will make any misunderstandings with the information occur.”