Carbon rules and new CBS tax rate put pressure on companies’ planning in 2027

Brazilian companies are starting to treat carbon as a competitiveness item, and not just as an environmental issue. According to Times Brasil, Érica Perin heads the direct taxation area at EY Brasil, where she is a partner, and assesses that the regulated carbon market forming in the country should affect costs, financing, taxation and foreign trade.

In Perin's assessment, carbon and emissions will be priced. To do this, companies will need to record their emissions in an inventory and have governance and controls that allow them to quantify how much carbon impacts the result. The discussion is no longer just about sustainability and becomes part of the management routine.

The implementation will be gradual. The regulations published in October set entry stages by sector, which gives companies a deadline, but also requires planning for each phase now.

In the field of taxes, the federal court of accounts approved on Wednesday (28) the 11.3% rate for CBS, a tax that will replace federal taxes on consumption, according to Revista Oeste. The percentage, however, still depends on an act by the Senate, which must be completed by December 15th. The productive sector expected a percentage close to 9%.

In 2027, the reform moves to the next phase, which forces companies to complete next year's budget and adapt the programs that issue invoices. According to the same publication, a portion of businesspeople want the implementation to be postponed.

The result is a dense agenda, in which carbon targets, consumption tax rules and budget deadlines arrive at almost the same time. For companies, the challenge is to transform these requirements into predictable costs.

What changes for the investor

For those who follow the stock market and interest rates, the combination of these rules can change the reading of margins and financing, especially in companies more exposed to emissions or taxes on consumption. The points to watch in the coming months are the Senate's resolution on the CBS tax rate, the distance between the 11.3% approved by the TCU and the approximately 9% expected by the sector, and the possibility of postponing the reform. The weight of these changes tends to vary depending on the activity of each company, and there is no basis for the information collected to estimate their effect on prices.

Automatically translated from Portuguese.