Many newspapers published this event that shook the market in the same week.
The problem is that, in fact, the marketplaces that practice this type of sales without the inclusion of customs taxes, with payments for transactions processed in Brazil, are taking advantage of the Post Office’s lack of taxation capacity for the amount of parcel volumes that arrive in the country.
They think as follows, “if the importer consumer is the one who must pay the tax, and he is not called to do so, it is not our fault, we are within the law; we only deliver the purchased products”.
In a way, this argument brings a certain truth in relation to the Brazilian Federal Revenue, whose obligation is to evaluate and tax products from abroad.
If there is a lack of capacity due to this institution’s failure to comply with the process, it is not the fault of the Marketplaces; they cannot force buyers to pay taxes of their own free will.
On the other hand, we know that the fact that the tax is not collected does not mean that it is not due.
Also, what marketplaces are not seeing is that the value of payments sent abroad have no legal justification, that is, as stated before, the entire payment value of an import, whether direct or formal, must have its justification in the Import Declaration.
If thousands of products are paid through Brazilian financial institutions to marketplaces abroad, but have not legally entered the country, i.e., their taxes have not been paid, the remittance of payment abroad will be considered illegal by the Brazilian Central Bank, sooner or later. Later!
Since the Marketplace is co-responsible before the Brazilian IRS for the operations that occurs there, being responsible for the previous five years, imagine if the Federal Revenue in a joint action with the Brazilian Central Bank, instead of deciding to charge importers the due taxes, to facilitate their action, decide to charge the Marketplaces, which in turn will transfer liability for these payments to sellers?
That is already happening in Rio de Janeiro where the local court is charging marketplace for the ICMS (State Tax) not paid by sellers.