One day after the government withdrew from the Federal Revenue measure that increased monitoring of transactions carried out by Pix, the councilor of Belo Horizonte Pedro Rousseff (PT)grandnephew of the former president Dilma Rousseff (PT).
The tax authorities’ measure that guaranteed greater control over digital transactions was the target of a “bombardment” of misinformation on social media, .
In the video published by the councilor of the capital of Minas Gerais, Paulo Guedes defends, during a meeting of the secretariat of the Ministry of Economy, in 2019, the creation of a tax on digital transactions.
“The idea of taxing not only consumption and income, but also transactions was an idea that we considered from the beginning. It was never the CPMF. There has to be a tax that taxes a digital transaction”, says Paulo Guedes in the clipping published by the councilor.
At the time, in December 2019, the then president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) declared that “all alternatives are on the table”. Guedes defended a tax on financial transactions along different lines from the extinct Provisional Contribution on Financial Transactions (CPMF).
“You won’t even go to the bank anymore, [vai] transfer money via cell phone. How will this transaction be taxed? This digital transaction? You need a tax. There has to be a tax for digital transactions”, stated Guedes, without giving details of how the charge would be, just highlighting that the new tax would be different from the CPMF.
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At the time of the declaration, Pix had not yet been implemented by the Central Bank (BC). The process to create the system began in 2018, during the government of former president Michel Temer (MDB), when the institution was led by economist Ilan Goldfajn. Pix was launched in 2020, with Roberto Campos Neto at the head of BC.
Project against fake news
In response to the deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG), Rousseff filed a municipal bill against fake news in Belo Horizonte.
According to the project, the city hall would be responsible for developing actions in the city’s schools so that students could learn to identify “characteristic elements of fake news and content manipulation techniques”.
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The measure would be, according to the text, a way of developing “information checking and source verification skills” in students. The proposal will still be analyzed by the City Council.
This week, before the government backed down on the IRS rule, Nikolas Ferreira recorded a video about the Tax Authority’s determination that forced financial institutions to report Pix and credit card transactions above R$5,000 (individuals) and R$15 thousand (legal entity) per month.
In the video, the parliamentarian states that the IRS rule was a “breach of confidentiality masquerading as transparency”. Throughout the video, Nikolas omits information about Pix, Income Tax and the Federal Revenue inspection system.
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The now revoked rule only extended the monitoring obligation to other institutions and increased the minimum amount of transactions to be reported.
(With Estadão Content)
