*By Antonio Carlos Caldas
We know that our country has a great tax complexity, making the tax administration of any business a huge challenge for every company. According to recent surveys carried out by the World Bank, the time spent by companies with tax obligations in Brazil ranges from 1,483 to 1,501 hours per year. This time is longer than in any other country in the world. Another study, carried out by the IBPT (Brazilian Institute of Planning and Taxation), shows that companies spend an average of R$ 180 billion per year on tax bureaucracies.
It is also worth remembering that taxation is not a simple matter. It is necessary to understand the subject in order to keep up with the Brazilian government. According to the same IBPT study, in Brazil, there are 53 new tax rules every working day – 2.21 per hour.
With the SPED (Public Digital Bookkeeping System) it is no different. It is constantly updated by the Tax Authorities and it is necessary to be aware of new versions and changes that are released regularly. For example, the former DIRF (Declaration of Withholding Income Tax) will be completely extinguished in 2024 and its taxpayers will comply with the EFD-Reinf (Digital Tax Bookkeeping of Withholdings and Other Tax Information), which was instituted in 2017 .
Faced with this scenario, next year, EFD-Reinf will start operating with a new version of its layout, which will contain seven new inclusions: R-1050, R-4010, R-4020, R-4040, R-4080, R-4099 and R-9005, which correspond to withholding IR (Income Tax), CSLL (Social Contribution on Net Income), PIS, COFINS and miscellaneous payments. The changes will come into effect as of March 2023. Those companies that must deliver these taxes and fail to do so will be subject to a fine. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the requirements in order not to face greater problems in the future.
It is a fact that every effort to stay abreast of the tax system costs companies dearly. The structure of technology and human resources that companies need to make available to deal with bureaucracy consumes around 1.5% of their annual revenue, according to the IBPT (Brazilian Institute of Planning and Taxation). In addition, all the time spent to take care of tax services can be missed by the employee who was given this task, missing deadlines to fulfill his main functions within a company.
As time is short and the need and concern are enormous, the focus of a business cannot revolve around its tax obligations. Therefore, it is necessary to look for a solution that can alleviate these tasks and one of the best options is BPO (Business Process Outsourcing). Under this model, a company hires another company to take care of tax matters to meet its tax demands.
This idea is beneficial, because when a company outsources its tax services, it gains time to focus on its business, and not on bureaucratic operations involving taxation. In this way, business productivity increases and it is possible to direct all the focus on what really matters. Outsourcing, in addition to guaranteeing more time for the employee to carry out their main function, also prevents employees from getting involved in tiring tasks that are not linked to their professional attribution and leave them overloaded with external matters. In addition, to keep up with the changes it takes study and time, but it is not the obligation of companies to have a full understanding of taxation. Therefore, hiring the BPO service can bring security to tax processes, as a specialist arm has mastery of this subject and the technologies that accompany the changes in the Brazilian tax system. That is, the chance of committing tax errors, as well as avoiding tax assessments, is lower when outsourcing.
*Antônio Carlos Caldas is head of BPO Fiscal at SONDA Brasil, a regional leader in Digital Transformation services.
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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