PIS/PASEP e COFINS : o desalinhamento entre os conceitos contábil e fiscal de insumo e seu efeito sobre o resultado contábil das empresas brasileiras

Abstract

Social contributions in 2002 became subject to a non-cascade payment system. The method adopted in order to make the system effective was different from that employed for other taxes in Brazil, based on the Tax Credit Method. Jointly with this innovation, on regulating the system's implementation Secretaria da Receita Federal do Brasil (SRFB) also adopted concepts that restricted the breadth of the credits, which fact in addition to making it difficult to calculate social contributions also increased the tax burden by various companies subject to this system. In the light of these assumptions and the effects that taxation causes on decisions by agents, the purpose of this paper was to detect the extent of the misalignment between accounting and fiscal concepts of inputs, in which resides one of the chief uncertainties of the non-cascade system, and its impact on the income figures of companies subject to a non-cascade social contribution system. Based on documental and bibliographic analyses, this survey detected the extent of this misalignment, listing examples of payments not included in the fiscal concept of inputs. By means of the answers obtained from the questionnaire made available to the companies covered by this survey, following a descriptive statistical treatment, it became possible to confirm that the misalignment between the fiscal and accounting concepts had an adverse impact on the income figures of those companies subject to the non-cascade system, although it is not this survey's intention to extend this outcome statistically to the entire population.