iFood paid almost R$1 billion in taxes to the Federal Revenue Service after the government won a victory in court, which considered the use of tax benefits since 2023 by the delivery intermediation giant in the Events Sector Emergency Resumption Program (Perse) to be improper.
Despite having its revenues increase significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic due to the boom in home food deliveries, iFood was the company that failed to collect the most taxes under the program, created with the declared objective of helping sectors impacted by movement restrictions in cities.
Originally a Brazilian company, iFood became 100% controlled by the Dutch group Prosus in 2022.
FREE TOOL
XP simulator
Find out in 1 minute how much your money can yield
An August decision by the Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region that had not yet been made public confirmed the government’s thesis that iFood was not entitled to tax exemption under the program after the issuance of an ordinance that limited eligible activities. The court’s understanding is that payments should have resumed from May 2023, but the company continued to benefit under the protection of injunctions.
In a document seen by Reutersthe Federal Revenue cited in the process “enormous damage to the treasury” and pointed out that the company improperly failed to collect more than R$900 million in federal taxes.
In response to the Court’s decision, iFood informed that it has already made payments of the amounts due in installments in the months of September and October, highlighting that it is “up to date with all its obligations to the Revenue”.
“iFood clarifies that the resources used to pay these taxes were provisioned on its balance sheet and, therefore, there was no financial impact on the operation,” he said in a note.
The company also added that it enjoyed the benefit only while the court decision authorizing it to do so was in force, having stopped its use since January of this year.
The payments help the government in pursuit of the goal of zero fiscal deficit this year, while the economic team evaluates solutions to cover the hole opened in the Budget after the National Congress overturned provisional measure 1303, which raised taxes and provided for some spending cuts.
Continues after advertising
When contacted, the Federal Revenue stated that it does not comment on topics under discussion in the Judiciary or situations involving specific taxpayers.
Created in 2021, Perse zeroed IRPJ, CSLL, PIS and Cofins rates for companies in the events and tourism sectors and related areas. The program, however, underwent legal changes that aimed to restrict it since the Jair Bolsonaro government, and was extinguished in April this year after the approval of a ceiling of R$15 billion in tax waivers, part of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s effort to reduce tax spending.
“Perse was scheduled to end when the tax waiver reached R$15 billion. So, as iFood was the biggest beneficiary of the program, it was there in the first place, it consumed this limit, and other taxpayers began to feel harmed”, said National Treasury attorney Raquel Mendes.
Continues after advertising
According to her, the payment of iFood to the government will not generate a reopening of Perse for new concessions of benefits, despite the fact that, in practice, the R$15 billion limit of the program was not effectively consumed after the return of taxes.
Tax authorities’ arguments attached to the process point out that the delivery company “was not even affected by the pandemic, on the contrary, it grew absurdly”, with monthly taxable revenues that jumped from R$236 million in March 2020 to R$836 million in December 2022 and R$1.2 billion in December 2024.
The high revenue waiver generated by Perse even after the end of the pandemic was the target of criticism from the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, who described the program as poorly designed, with excessive waivers that hampered the government’s work to improve the trajectory of public accounts.
Continues after advertising
In 2023, he even proposed the termination of the program, but due to pressure from Congress, the initiative ended up being extended last year, providing a ceiling of R$15 billion, an amount that was consumed in less than a year.
