Manufacturers of equipment for the oil and gas sector can take advantage of the exemption from federal taxes when providing services to operators, using the goods they produce. The Federal Revenue Service clarified, through a consultation solution, that the tax benefit provided for in the Repetro-Industrialization regime does not only apply to the sale of these products.
Consultation Solution No. 82 was published by the General Coordination of Taxation (Cosit). The understanding, published on the 2nd, must be followed by all tax auditors in the country.
According to lawyers, the IRS’s position is beneficial to the market. “It changes the way contracts are contracted. Since the asset does not need to be sold, the contract becomes cheaper and simpler,” explains lawyer Rodrigo Pinheiro, partner at the firm Schmidt, Valois, Miranda, Ferreira & Agel.
The statement was made in a consultation submitted by a manufacturer of underwater equipment. The company reported that, in addition to industrial services, it provides various types of services – such as well cementing – to oil exploration, production and refining companies.
The doubt arose due to the provision of article 27 of Normative Instruction No. 1901, of 2019, which deals with Repetro-Industrialization. Through this regime, the payment of four federal taxes is suspended when the industrialist purchases or imports inputs for the manufacture of products used in the exploration, development and production of oil or natural gas.
Article 27 provides that the suspension of tax payments is converted into a zero rate of PIS and Cofins and an exemption from IPI and Import Tax when “the sale of the final product” to the operators is made. Based on this rule, the manufacturer ended up signing two contracts with the operators: one for the provision of services and another for the purchase and sale of the good.
In the consultation solution, however, the IRS understood that the benefit is not restricted to the sale of equipment. It can also be used when it is used to provide services. “If the service provider can purchase the final product with benefits on the market and make it available to the operator without the need for sale, it can also purchase the required inputs and manufacture the final product itself and then make it available for its final destination, through the provision of services related to the regime”, it concludes.
According to tax lawyer Patrícia Azevedo, from the Kincaid Mendes Vianna law firm, the consultation solution is positive because it fills a gap in the legislation. “When it comes to tax benefits, the interpretation of the rules is always literal. That is why this clarification from the IRS is important,” she says.
In its response to the taxpayer, the Tax Authorities themselves acknowledge the gap in Article 27 of IN No. 1901. For the Revenue, the rules that regulate the benefit – Law No. 13,586 of 2017 and Decree No. 9,537 of 2018 – impose as a requirement for the suspension of federal taxes only the use of goods in production carried out in Brazil and the use of the final product in activities in the oil or natural gas sector. “They do not strictly require the sale of the final product for the use of the benefit,” says the agency.