Source: Valor Econômico (São Paulo - SP) - 24/05/2012

Rio Grande do Sul is the first Brazilian state to implement, as a test, the Electronic Invoice (NF-e) in commerce. A pilot project that includes four companies (Renner, Lojas Colombo, Panvel and Paquetá), forwards the tax receipt to the consumer by e-mail, and no longer prints the document in stores.

According to the financial administrative director of the Panvel pharmacy chain, Roberto Coimbra, at the time of purchase with the NF-e, the customer will receive a non-tax receipt stating details of the purchase and the key to access the note on the website of the Secretaria da Fazenda do Rio Grande do Sul. The NF-e is also sent by email to the consumer.

The Information Technology Manager at Lojas Colombo, Luis Carlos Alberti, says that NF-e will reduce the costs and bureaucratic procedures that the fiscal printer demanded. With the change it will no longer be necessary for companies to issue a tax document, which makes it possible to use a common printer.

Currently, equipment that issues a paper invoice must be registered with the Treasury Department. The process, in addition to requiring a registration fee at the Farm, does not allow the machines to be used outside the registered address. "The NF-e facilitates if the company goes to a fair and makes a kiosk" says Alberti, Currently, only two units of the Colombo chain - which has 318 stores in the southern states of the country, São Paulo and Minas Gerais - issue the NF -e, both in the city of Farroupilha (RS).

Coimbra says that fiscal printers cost from R $ 2 to R $ 3 thousand and are produced by a few companies. He estimates that the exchange of printers will mean savings of more than R $ 500 thousand reais per year for Panvel. Currently, only one of the chain's 300 stores, distributed in the southern states of the country, issues the NF-e.

For the lawyer Maucir Fregonesi, from Siqueira Castro Advogados, the consumer benefits of NF-e are similar to the Nota Fiscal Paulista. "The consumer will be sure that the operation he performed was formalized at the farm, which reduces tax evasion".

"The NF-e ends up creating a history of where the customer consumed, at the end of the month he can know what he spent on the website of the Finance Department" says Coimbra.

The director of information technology at Lojas Renner, Leandro Balbinot, says that by the end of 2013, chain stores in Rio Grande do Sul will issue the NF-e.