Source: Agência Brasil - DF - 27/10/2009

São Paulo - Research carried out among 300 companies associated with the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp) showed that 29% of them consider the accumulation of export tax credits at the federal level as a very serious problem and 44% answered that, also at the state level, the accumulation of these credits is very serious.

Exporters accumulate credits for paying taxes when buying used products as inputs for the manufacture of items intended for sale abroad. In this process, inputs would have a zero rate, for example. Thus, the refund by the Federal Revenue is analyzed before it is actually paid.

The research was commented on today (27) during the seminar on Tax Exoneration for Exports: an Appeal to Competitiveness. According to the executive secretary of the Foreign Trade Chamber (Camex), Lytha Spíndola, if it depends on the government, the Brazilian export sector will have a totally exempted system already in 2010. of equality with a foreign competitor abroad, needs to be exempted as well. ”

According to her, the difficulty to relieve the Brazilian tax system is in its complexity, incomparable with the rest of the world, because there are four value added taxes, which are paid throughout the production process and which are deducted in later stages. "This type of tax calculation, which is not just the opposite of what is levied on the final consumer, as it exists in the United States, for example."

Lytha reinforced that, in Brazil, each component of the chain pays the tax and, when it reaches the final stage, when exporting the product, the ideal would be that all the tax paid before it was returned. “But it is very difficult to identify those values ​​to whom it is due and this return is often subject to fraud. The Brazilian tax system makes the return of these taxes and previous production stages more complex ”, he analyzed.

For her, the solution is the electronic invoice and the digital bookkeeping system, which are being implemented by the government. “This will allow us to clearly identify which tax is embedded in the inputs and, with that, it will be easier to return the tax that is legitimate and, at the same time, prevent this refund mechanism from becoming a vulnerable element to manipulation or fraud, ”explained Lytha.

The chief director of the Department of International Relations and Foreign Trade at Fiesp, Roberto Giannetti da Fonseca, said he had doubts that there would be a general overhaul of the export tax system in the short term. “In 2011 [after the elections], the solution to the export tax burden has to be the first issue, whether in the National Congress or in the Executive. The reform has to be broad because it is necessary to change the nature of taxes, eliminating accumulative taxes, so that the country is not tied to a backward, complex structure that leads the country to a lack of competitiveness. ”

The professor of economics at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo, stated that the Brazilian tax model is anti-exporting. According to him, the ideal is that the country has a system that makes companies capable of competing in the international market according to their productivity, industrial capacity and innovation, without the “tax” being levied abroad. product. “This tax has to be charged abroad as a consumption tax. It is a burden that must fall on the consumer and not on the producer because it distorts the forms of competition ”, he explained.

Belluzzo emphasized that exemption is a right that the exporter has and should not be seen as an incentive. He also said that the exemption cannot be sectorial, as it should apply to all areas that are dedicated to exports. According to the economist, Brazil's tax burden has been changing over time due to the weight of indirect taxes and, above all, with taxes that affect the billing. “This all causes serious distortions in the calculation of the cost of the exported product. This puts us in an unfavorable condition in competitive terms. It is a scenario that came with the exchange rate appreciation. ”