Brazil Aims To Slash Tax Compliance Burden

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

11 August 2017

Brazil has announced a strategy for simplifying its notoriously complex tax system.

At a meeting held on August 7, 2017, the country's Inland Revenue laid out four tax simplification measures aimed at reducing costs for businesses and improving the country's business environment:

• Improving the country's centralized system for filing tax returns to allow information to be shared between the various tax authorities, to reduce compliance costs and to make tax collection more efficient;
• Centralizing tax obligations and removing the many regional declaration requirements and forms. Under the plans, information would only need to be submitted through the central system rather than at a regional level;
• Centralizing the tax system for electronic services offered by companies in Brazil; and
• Harmonizing compliance with customs-related tax obligations.

Companies reportedly expend about 32 percent of their resources just complying with the country's onerous tax laws, which are often reported to be the world's most complex in many indices. In particular, at the meeting, the private sector complained that companies have to comply with a total of 27 different laws covering the ICMS, a state-level value-added tax.

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