*By Mauro Negruni

I invite you to take a quick glance at the tax scenario for the next two years (2015 and 2016), when Brazilian citizens and companies will be challenged and will have to work a lot to be compliant with tax authorities’ demands. I mapped over 15 issues that may bring solutions to many companies. Of course, each market segment is submitted to specific projects, but all of them involve significant impacts.

SPED (the Portuguese acronym for “Digital Public Bookkeeping System”) has been developed as a totally digital system. Brazilian companies started using the system in 2007. Since then, processes like invoicing, purchasing and manufacturing have been transformed, as well as the way to deal with financial data and to pay taxes. In other words, there was a revolution in the bookkeeping process.

In the past, we used paper. Nowadays, companies are obligated to send digital books to the tax authorities, through which they have access to many details related to each operation. The auditing of these books is done by Brazil’s federal tax agency (Receita Federal do Brasil), considering the country’s econo-my, the tax scenario and the relationship between companies. So, this database is really large and full of important information about Brazilian companies.

Thus, the federal tax agency uses the system to be aware of companies’ operations and to control them. The first version of SPED, however, was not  complete. The amount of information was poor. The system is being improved year by year, which is motivated by new legal definitions.

It is important to mention that Brazil’s tax scenario is highly complex. There are too many taxes and laws. Besides, there are three levels of taxation: federal, state and municipal. Tax substitution also added more requirements to compliance.

For the next two years, the main focus will be directed to “bloco K”, which will be composed by detailed records about manufacturing (inputs, settings, loss & results). The other important project that should be mentioned is “eSocial”, that will consider employees’ payments (credits and debits) and services (contracts, payables, receivables and invoices). It is possible to say that “eSocial” is the most complex project since the beginning of SPED, due to the fact that Brazil’s current labor laws were established in 1943. “eSocial” has been created in order to ensure that important information is sent to all the agencies involved (Ministério do Trabalho, Instituto Nacional de Seguridade Social, Receita Federal do Brasil and Caixa Econômica Federal).

There is also a new and complex project that became part of SPED: the income tax return to be done in 2015, considering data from 2014. It is coming based in IFRS and regulated by Brazil’s specific laws. This situation may allow two different types of profit: tax and corporate.

Some tips to help your company to face these challenges:

1 – search for a specialist in SPED (an experienced one). Your company will need him;
2 – do not underestimate the effort involved. It will be hard;
3 – of course, old systems or complex ones are not indicated to be used in environments like SPED;
4 – in a cross-checking environment, some cents may be the cause of rejection cause;
5 – before purchasing your system, hiring a professional consulting is recommended;
6 – it is not possible to change the past, particularly in the case of master data management  in ERP (related to taxes).

So, there are many tasks to be executed in the next two years. Let’s face them together?

Really, there are many tasks to accomplish in just two years, but being well advised by those who know enough to Brazilian tax reality, it is certainly a great start. Let’s face them together?

*Mauro Negruni is considered a leading expert on Brazil’s tax scenario and works as Director of Knowledge and Technology at Decision IT, a Brazilian company specialized on the development of tax solutions that also provides consultancy services, helping other companies to be compliant with tax authorities’ demands.

Fonte: Decision IT