A tax reform will lead to price increases in almost 600 thousand items, including products and services, and will impact supplier companies classified in the Simples Nacional system. Additionally, the dual-rate of the Value Added Tax (VAT) – consisting of the Contribution on Goods and Services (CBS) and the Tax on Goods and Services (IBS) – can reach 30.3%, higher than the previously disclosed 26.5%.
The warning comes from the tax lawyer Lucas Ribeiro, founder and CEO of ROIT, a company specialized in artificial intelligence applied to fiscal, accounting, and financial management. Ribeiro highlights important points that had gone unnoticed until then.
The study presented by Ribeiro is based on a wide database from ROIT, specialized in serving companies from various economic activities mainly under the Real Profit regime, with ancillary obligations of the Public Digital Bookkeeping System (Sped), from the IRS, and fiscal documents. Information from 837 companies nationwide was compiled, with a combined annual revenue of $470 billion.
The specialist explains that analyzing the impact of the tax reform should focus carefully on recalculating the prices of purchasing goods, services, and other items that are currently not taxed, such as loans, mobile and immovable property leases, borrowed loans, among many others. “Even loyalty program points will be taxed!” the specialist elaborates.
The calculation needs to consider the taxes involved throughout the chain before inserting the new taxes. It is from this recomposition that it becomes possible to define the new selling prices to ensure that the margin is not compromised with the new system. This is one of the reasons why a company cannot base itself on the change in tax rates and needs to pay attention to the change in prices, item by item, right away. Ribeiro notes that, in many cases, companies are interpreting the tax reform incorrectly, concerned with the rate, when they should be concerned with the tax base, which will be much broader.
In this sense, the study identifies almost 600 thousand items (584 thousand, to be exact) that will need to undergo an increase. These are products and services of various types. On the Revenue Service side, to avoid revenue loss, Ribeiro warns that it is impossible, under the current conditions, for the dual VAT rate to actually be only 26.5%, considering the scenario of these analyzed companies.
“To understand the impact of the reform, we need to see the revenue base. [And the complementary bill 68/2024] has 28 pages and more than 20 articles to define the ‘neutrality’ calculation. It is complex to project this calculation without being at risk of an extreme increase in revenue between 2027 and 2029.
Therefore, Ribeiro refers to the VAT of the tax reform as ‘Ivão,’ with characteristics that differ from the concept of value-added tax applied worldwide. ‘It [VAT] presents itself as simple, it claims to be neutral and everything else, but it goes wild, it eats feijoada, it drinks caipirinha… It is a very different VAT, a very special VAT, a Brazilian VAT, and we need to handle it with care.’
IMPACT ON COMPANIES UNDER SIMPLE NATIONAL
Another aspect that deserves attention and has been neglected is the impact of the tax reform on Simples Nacional companies. This is because this segment is characterized as a supplier and customer of large companies, inserted in Lucro Real, whose taxation will be altered, among other aspects, by the generation of financial tax credits, meaning the credit will correspond only to the amount actually collected. The problem is that acquiring from Simples companies will not result in the generation of full credits, reducing the competitiveness of these companies.
Therefore, large companies can lose R$ 1 billion in credits, for currently buying R$ 6.4 billion in goods and services. In order not to bear this loss, one risk is that Lucro Real companies will then dismiss Simples Nacional suppliers, which would be disastrous for this segment.
The proposed solution is for Simples companies to migrate to the Regular Regime, with IBS and CBS calculated as if they were in Lucro Real, which is complex. “There are 6 million companies in Simples Nacional, which are not accustomed to the complexity of the non-cumulative tax regime. Migrating requires systems, processes, culture, knowledge; requires investments,” argues the tax expert.
