COVID-19 | New Ordinances by the National Treasury regulates extraordinary transaction and suspension of terms and collection acts

On March 17, 2020, Minister for the Economy Paulo Guedes signed Ordinance No. 103, which deals with measures related to the acts of collection of the federal government on overdue liability, including the possibility of suspension, extension and deferral, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

As measures to be adopted, terms for taxpayers to present their defense as well as other Federal Union collection procedures will be suspended for up to 90 days. The creation of a new adhesion transaction proposal was also determined, to be regulated by the National Treasury.

As a result of the ministerial authorization, Ordinances No.  7,820 and 7,821 were published on March 18, 2020.

1)   National Treasury’ s Ordinance No. 7.820

• Down payment corresponding to 1% of the total amount of debts to be transacted, divided by up to three equal and successive installments
  
• Installment payment of the remainder amount for up to 81 months, or up to 97 months in the case of a natural person taxpayer, individual entrepreneur, micro-company or small business
  • For debts arising from social security contributions related to item “a” of item I and item II of article 195 of the Constitution, the installment term will be up to 57 months.
    
• Postponement of the beginning of the payment of the remaining installments to June 30, 2020.

The ordinance clarifies that the accession to the transaction is subject to the waiver of judicial actions, defenses presented, or appeals related to the transacted credits, with the submission of a request extinction of the respective processes, under the terms of items “c” and III of article 487 of the Civil Procedure Code.

Accession to the extraordinary transaction must be fulfilled through the REGULARIZE platform, which can be accessed at www.regularize.pgfn.gov.br, until March 25, 2020.

2)   National Treasury’ s Ordinance No. 7,821

1. Suspension of deadlines for 90 days with respect to the following:

• Deadline for administrative defense and deadline for appeal against a decision issued under the Administrative Procedure for Recognizing Responsibility (PARR)
  
• Deadline for submitting a statement of nonconformity and appeal against a decision that excludes the taxpayers from PERT (Amnesty program established by Law No. 13.496/2017) Deadline for the administrative offering of guarantees before a Tax Collection Action, deadline for submitting a request for review of overdue liability certificate and deadline for appeal against a decision that rejects the requests (These deadlines are the ones established in article No. 6 of National Treasury’ s Ordinance No. 33/2018: Art. 6. Once the overdue liability is certified, the taxpayer will be notified to: (…) II – within 30 days : a) offer a guarantee in advance of the tax collection action; or b) submit a review of overdue liability certificate (PRDI).)
  

2. Suspension for 90 days in relation to means of collection by the National Treasury:

• Presentation of overdue liability certificate for registration by Notary Protest Office (protest is a common act carried out by the Notary Protest Office for the non-payment of the tax debts (set forth by Law No. 9.492/1997). In a nutshell, the protest demonstrates to other companies and financial institutes that the taxpayer has outstanding debts, which may cause certain  constraints, for instance, to sign new agreements with its clients or obtain funds before financial institutes);

• Establishment of a new PARR

• Establishment of new procedures for the exclusion of taxpayers from installment programs  under the scope of the National Treasury.