Ruralists create an alternative and demand adjustments to tax reform

According to Times Brasil, the agribusiness bench in Congress, gathered under the acronym FPA, is putting together an alternative proposal and trying to get Parliament to reconsider parts of the tax reform. The group rejects changes that could affect the sector and says it will use its political weight to maintain the advantages it deems essential to the activity.

Pedro Lupion (Republicanos-PR), federal deputy and president of the FPA, spoke this Tuesday (3). According to the vehicle, the front's intention is to make the reform less harmful to rural producers, and not to block debate on the topic.

Orders are straightforward. The group wants the lower rate to continue to apply to food, with a 60% reduction. It also asks that field inputs remain outside the selection process and that producers with annual revenue of a maximum of R$3.6 million receive an exemption.

The claims touch on two sensitive points: the cost of producing food in the field and the cost of inputs that producers purchase. When the rate is reduced or an input is excluded from a tax, the bill weighs less on the final price and on the margin of those who produce, but the exception also transfers part of the burden to other taxpayers.

The billing exemption request deserves separate attention. By defining a revenue ceiling for the benefit, the proposal creates a cut-off by producer size, which makes the general rule an exception for a range of the sector. This design needs to be evaluated carefully, because sectoral regimes tend to multiply when one of them is approved.

The advancement of the counterproposal occurs while the text can still change in Congress, which keeps the issue open. The pressure from the bench shows how tax reform has become a field of dispute between sectors with different interests, and not just a technical debate about taxes.

What changes for the investor

For those who follow agribusiness, input and food companies, the central point is predictability. If the claimed benefits are preserved, the tax burden of these chains tends to become lighter, which could affect margins. If there is a loss of benefits, the bill goes up and the results reading changes. While the final design is not defined, regulatory uncertainty will continue to be an evaluation factor for the sector, without making it possible to predict prices or share performance.

Automatically translated from Portuguese.