The rapporteur of the working group on the tax reform in the Chamber, Aguinaldo Ribeiro (PP-PB), said, this Tuesday (7), that it is necessary to calculate the fiscal impact regarding the possibility of including the exemption of the payroll of certain sectors in the initiative that intends to modernize the Brazilian tax system.
Earlier, the Minister of Labor, Luiz Marinho, said he was “sympathetic” to replacing the burden on payroll with the burden on companies’ billings. He believes that the issue should be discussed during the tax reform.
“The payroll exemption debate has to be done together with the tax reform. Social security does not give up revenue and society has to debate it”, he said.
Asked about the subject, Aguinaldo Ribeiro said he had to wait “what is this suggestion”. “We are in a moment of discussion with the federated entities, federal government, states and municipalities, the productive sectors and, from there, elaborate a proposal that is, I would say, balanced.”
“All these speculations that we are hearing on a daily basis, they need to pass through the impact sieve. And we still haven’t even had the concreteness of the suggestions, they are just speculation, and they haven’t even been evaluated from the point of view of impact”, added the rapporteur.
Ribeiro stated that, this Monday (6th), in a meeting with the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, the working group did not receive any indications from the government that it would like the exemption from payroll to enter into the tax reform.
In his view, the tax burden on the payroll “is very high” and the issue has to be discussed in a “structural” way.
The group’s coordinator, Reginaldo Lopes (PT-MG), stated that the eventual exemption of the payroll will be dealt with “at the right time” and avoided nailing the matter to the reform, although he left the question open.
“It is obvious that, in this constitutional amendment itself, it is possible, if the government already understands it, to also bring this payroll exemption as a transition in the new model of collection of consumption tax.” In any case, he said that the payroll of labor-intensive companies should receive “some special attention” in the tax reform, as in the IVA (Value Added Tax).
Reginaldo Lopes also said that the group is debating the possibility of having two VATs in a single legislation: the national VAT and the VAT of subnational entities. “There is no possibility of a decrease in revenue, because there is a transition. Neither before, nor during nor after, because there is a transition period in relation to the collection of 40 years.”
This Tuesday, the tax reform working group met to analyze and approve a series of requests for public hearings to discuss the issue. The forecast is that Aguinaldo Ribeiro will deliver the group’s report on May 16.
Source: CNN Brasil
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