Ipea study fosters debate on tax justice and topics such as tax collection and increase in collection
At the time the government wages battles at the National Congress and the Supreme Court (STF) on tax collection, increased collection and tax justice, a study by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), a body subordinate to the Ministry of Planning and Budget, points out that discrepancy allowed in tax collection rules make the government annually, more than $ 200 billion.
The document inefficiencies and income tax iniquities: from the neglected agenda to the next stage of tax reform, is by the researcher of the Ipea Sérgio Wulff Gobetti’s Board of Macroeconomic Studies and Policies, assigned to the Rio Grande do Sul Secretariat of Finance.
Gobetti explains that the study proposes to show that “perpetuated iniquities” in tax collection rules generate economic inefficiency, and weaken the principle of progressivity, that is, rich to pay more than the poor proportionally.
The study, available on the IPEA website, promotes the debate on tax justice while in the House of Representatives the Bill (PL) that exempts from Income Tax (IR) who earns up to R $ 5,000 and provides for minimum taxation of high income, people with income exceeding R $ 600 per year.
In the Supreme Court, a discussion of government decree that increases the tax rate tax rate (IOF), after Congress was overturned the measure, claiming that the effort to adapt the public accounts should be made by cutting spending.
Tax regime
One of the main criticisms pointed out by the study is the difference between business profit tax regimes, the simple, presumed profit and real profit.
Simples Nacional is directed to micro and small companies that earn a maximum of R $ 4.8 million annually. The presumed profit is for companies that have a revenue of $ 78 million. The real profit regime applies to all other companies.
The simple and presumed profit are optional regimes. These companies pay legal income tax (IRPJ) and social contribution on net income (CSLL) not proportional to their profit, but to their revenues.
Differentiation from regimes is a way of encouraging and simplifying smaller businesses but, according to Gobetti, “there was a distortion of purpose”, which allows tax injustices from the moment the system loses the bond with the real contributory capacity of each individual.
“Among the owners of micro and small businesses, there are people with very different contributory capabilities. Two ‘small companies’ of equal revenues can reveal very different degrees of remuneration and contributory capacity of the respective completely different partners,” the study points out.
For Gobetti, the proposal is not to eliminate the simplified regime, it is to rescue the original vocation, trying to provide simplification and not an advantage.
“This advantage benefits the entrepreneurial entrepreneur less, the one who is investing, risking. I’m benefiting the least entrepreneur, the one who invests less and profits more.”
Smaller profit
Another failure, according to the study author, is that companies can seek breaches to make the presumed profit much smaller than the real.
“Nowadays, many conglomerates are formed by companies that are framed in real profit and others in presumed profit. And there is evidence that behind this business organization there is a strategy of allocating as much cost to the units submitted to real profit and, on the other hand, registering as much revenues as possible in the units subject to presumed profit. Thus, through an artificial division of costs and revenues between companies, Payment of taxes, ”he explains.
Ipea technician points out that the average percentage of profit presumption is 15.8%, while the average percentage assessed by the IRS was 30.4% between 2015 and 2019.
Gobetti estimates that the difference between the tax due and the theoretical tax represents the revenue resignation resulting from the special tax policy, and totaled in 2019, the latest year of the calculation, more than $ 200 billion, being $ 87.7 billion for the simple and $ 115.9 billion for presumed profit.
The researcher concludes that, as the jargon of the economy says, “there is no free lunch,” that is, someone has to pay for the benefit. In this case, “the more favored treatments are kept for certain goods and services the greater the tax rate tax rate (VAT, a new tax provided for in the tax reform) on those not favored to maintain the current collection”.
“A lower and evenly applied rate or with fewer exceptions and discrepancies than we have today would be extremely positive for the competitiveness of the Brazilian economy,” says Sérgio Gobetti.
Dividends
Another point highlighted by the researcher is the non -taxation of dividends, the slice of profit that companies distribute to shareholders. In Brazil dividends are not the target of IR. Gobetti suggests that taxing this amount would make the tax collection system more progressive and allow compensation to decrease taxes over companies, improving the business environment, including attracting foreign investors.
“It can provide more competitiveness to the Brazilian economy and greater progressiveness to income tax, by transferring the company’s focus to the shareholder,” argues the author of the study.
According to the survey, from the 38 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), known as the Club of Rich Countries, by bringing together the most developed economies in the world, only Estonia and Latvia maintain the exemption of dividends. Brazil is a candidate to enter the organization.
Gobetti also warns that if the country decides to tax dividends, ways to prevent companies from finding other means of distributing resources to shareholders, as is currently the so -called interest on equity (JCP). With JCP, the company distributes value to the shareholder as if it were an expense, that is, they are deducted from taxable profit.
According to the IPEA study, the JCP tax effect was a loss of revenue of around R $ 24 billion in 2023.
To illustrate the effect of income concentration, Gobetti points out that the income appropriate by the richest 1% has grown from 20.5% to 24.4% in the last 6 years. From this increase in concentration, 88% were “snapped” by the richest 0.1%.
“The profit of companies grew a lot, so we can imagine that we went to a new level of income concentration,” says Gobetti.
Oil
The researcher of the Directorate of Studies and Macroeconomic Policies takes advantage of the study to suggest a way to increase the collection of a specific sector of the economy, the oil, described by him as “obtaining extraordinary profits”.
Gobetti advises that there is an additional extraordinary charge when the price of the oil barrel touch the historical average of $ 70. Throughout 2025, Brent oil has been negotiated at a $ 64 and $ 75 interval.
According to him, in the range of $ 45 and $ 57 per barrel, companies in the industry get “attractive returns”, at least 10% of invested capital. He points out that there could be additional charge to each level of high oil, with the rate ranging from 10% to 20%.
“With the international price around the historical average, the revenue gain would be moderate, around $ 8 billion annually, but in extreme situations, such as 2022, with Brent at $ 100, the gain could reach $ 40 billion,” he estimates.
For him, this additional charge “would not eliminate the extraordinary gain of investors in times of high oil price, but would only capture a small part of that extraordinary profit.”
With information from.
