Law 14,440 was published in the Federal Official Gazette (DOU) last Monday (5/9), which included services intended for the export of industrialized products in the drawback regime. The new rules come into effect from January 1, 2023.
The law, a conversion of Provisional Measure 1112/22, establishes the Program for Increasing the Productivity of the Road Fleet in the Country (Renovar), which aims to remove old buses and trucks from circulation, and introduces tax changes. The drawback, established by Decree-Law 37/66, is a special regime that allows the suspension of taxes on the acquisition of inputs used in the industrialization of exported products.
Article 22 of Law 14,440 introduces a new provision by allowing export services for industrialized products to enter the drawback regime, thus suspending PIS and Cofins and PIS and Cofins imports on such services. Previously, the MP established that only industrialized products intended for export could be entitled to the suspension.
According to the rule, the following services are benefited: intermediation in the distribution of goods abroad; cargo insurance; customs clearance; storage of goods; road, rail, air, water or multimodal cargo transportation; cargo handling; container handling; cargo unitization or deunitization services; cargo document consolidation or deconsolidation; cargo transportation agency; express shipments; cargo weighing and measuring; cargo refrigeration; operational leasing or container rental; installation and assembly of exported goods; and training for the use of exported goods.
“The advantage is that the Brazilian exported product becomes more competitive, since it becomes cheaper, considering that it is not burdened by taxes with regard to services linked to export”, explains Fábio Nieves Barreira, partner at Viseu Advogados and former judge at the São Paulo Tax and Fees Court (TIT/SP).
For Matheus Bueno, partner at Bueno Tax Lawyers, this provision is great news. “Nowadays, service prices are as important and representative for exporters as those of raw materials and intermediate materials. In addition, there is a high level of taxation on the import of services, especially at the federal level. Recognizing drawback in these cases means further prioritizing national activity and the trade balance, which is precisely the ideal of the drawback regime,” he says.
For Tatiana Torres, partner at Rolim, Viotti, Goulart, Cardoso Advogados, “the measure adapts the taxation of services in Brazil to international best practices, meeting the demands of exporting companies. The expected result of the exemption from import operations of inputs and exports is greater competitiveness of national products in the foreign market”.
Furthermore, the tax specialist adds that in order to implement the benefit, the Federal Government must adjust its computerized control systems and issue an ordinance regulating the criteria for granting, enjoying, monitoring and inspecting the drawback regime, to include the contracting of services.
The law also establishes that the amount collected through the Economic Domain Intervention Contribution (Cide) be allocated to the renewal of the circulating fleet, among the hypotheses for financing the transport infrastructure. The contribution is levied on the import and sale of oil and its derivatives, natural gas and its derivatives, and ethyl alcohol fuel.