The Federal Revenue Service defined this Thursday (24/6) that credits arising from final court decisions relating to taxes paid unduly must be recognized in determining real profit in the assessment period in which their legal availability occurs.
The clarification was made through Consultation Solution number 92 of the General Coordination of Taxation. SC Cosit 92/2021 clarifies that the right to a refund of taxes collected unduly by virtue of a court decision, in the specific case portion of PIS/Cofins incident on ICMS, must be recognized in the IRPJ/CSLL base at the time the credit is understood to have been realized due to the final judgment, without altering the base of the calendar years to which it refers.
The tax specialist Alexandre Monteiro, from Bocater Advogados, understands that the result of the consultation is in line with the recognition of contingent assets by accounting standards, the effects of which are reproduced for taxation by IRPJ/CSLL.
“An understanding contrary to that of the consultation solution would require taxpayers to rectify their bases in the same years in which the contributions were calculated, reversing the deduction made and generating possible discussions regarding fines and interest,” states Monteiro.
Already to Louis Felipe Campos, partner at Rolim, Viotti, Goulart, Cardoso Advogados, the Tax Authorities made a mistake in their understanding. “Although companies subject to real profits must clearly respect the accrual basis, we should not defend the perfect synchronization of this basis for accounting and tax purposes,” he argues.
“In many situations, the tax authorities advocate the rectification of ancillary obligations to recover, for example, an undue tax payment requested administratively. Shouldn’t we use the same rationale advocated in the consultation solution for this situation? Or should we do this just for administrative simplicity (for the benefit of the tax authorities) since we have automatic crossover between ancillary obligations,” he asks.
New chapter in the dispute with the Tax Authorities
The tax specialist Fernanda Lains, from Bueno & Castro Tax Lawyers, analyzes that SC Cosit 92/2021 confirms the taxpayers' suspicion that the Closing of the Thesis of the Century by the STF opened a new chapter in the dispute with the Tax Authorities, now regarding the timing of the recognition of PIS and Cofins credits and, therefore, their taxation by IRPJ and CSLL.
For the lawyer, the Federal Revenue Service reaffirms the terms of the Interpretative Declaratory Act No. 25/2003 and demands recognition of the credit upon the final judgment, at which point the legal availability of the credit would be characterized.
“However, court decisions have a declaratory nature and do not, as a rule, indicate the amount of tax credit to be recovered by the taxpayer, which is determined through administrative means. In other words, the credit is not liquid when the lawsuit becomes final and binding, which is why the taxpayer cannot even consider the availability, even legally, of the income,” Lains emphasizes.
However, in the lawyer's view, the judicialization is still far from over. For her, there is still the possibility that taxpayers will resort to the Judiciary again to obtain authorization for the accounting recognition of those credits at the time of filing the offset declaration.
“It seems to us that there is still a long way to go for taxpayers until they can effectively recover the amounts that were unduly collected from the public coffers,” says the lawyer.
Source: https://www.conjur.com.br/2021-jun-27/receita-disciplina-devolucao-piscofins-pagos-indevidamente