The Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, denied this Tuesday (14) yet another piece of fake news associated with the department. The minister denied that the government intends to create an environmental tax for vehicles over 20 years old.
The false text circulated this Tuesday (14) through a montage of an article on a news portal. The false news states that the supposed fee, which would compensate for the pollution emitted by old vehicles, would be equivalent to 1% of the Fipe Table and that the money collected would be sent to the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (Funai).
According to Haddad, it’s all just fake news. “Today a new piece of fake news emerged that is circulating very strongly on the networks about something that I don’t even know how to explain, but it would be an environmental tax on vehicles that have been used for more than 20 years. I don’t know if you saw this, they simulate a G1 report”, declared the minister, upon leaving for the inauguration of the Secretary of Communication, Sidônio Palmeira.
Currently, some municipalities charge the Environmental Preservation Tax (TPA) on vehicles to promote sustainability and invest money in ecological actions. Resorts such as Bombinhas (SC) and Ubatuba (SP) charge a fee for tourist vehicles that visit the locations.
Haddad also commented on the recent decision by Meta, owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, to eliminate the information checking service in the United States. According to the minister, the decision will make it more difficult to combat fake news across the planet.
“It seems that after this alignment of big tech with the extreme right, we will indeed have difficult days ahead. And this consumes energy from the government, it consumes energy from the State, from public servants to combat a type of barbarity that, with this alignment with facism, should happen more”, he stated.
The minister said that attacks on the traditional press worsen the spread of fake news, with people preferring to believe any other source of information. “Unfortunately, sometimes people prefer to trust fake news rather than the press itself. There are many people today who say: ‘no, I don’t read the newspaper because I receive everything on WhatsApp from my uncle’. And uncle’s zap became a source of information. But the fact is that it is very serious and very unpleasant to go through this a second time in a week”, he declared.
Video removal
At the end of last week, a video generated by artificial intelligence was circulated with a fake interview with Haddad at the entrance of the Ministry of Finance in which the minister defended the creation of a “puppy tax”. Meta removed the fake video after being notified by the Attorney General’s Office (AGU).
“Some people are not taking seriously what this could mean for democracy by putting a sentence in someone’s mouth that they did not say with the technological refinement that makes many people believe it,” added the minister.
Since the beginning of the year, the IRS has faced a wave of fake news related to the false taxation of Pix. In recent days, the Tax Authorities have issued several clarifications that the modernization of monitoring of financial transactions does not mean tax collection nor will it affect self-employed workers and the use of shared credit cards.
