Banks try to reverse the billionaire defeat of food stamps – 7/5/2023 – Panel SA

Meal vouchers and food stamps, benefits that companies grant to their employees in exchange for discounts on Income Tax, have become a BRL 150 billion mess for the government, which, in order to regulate the new rules, faces interest of the largest banks in the country.

Known as ticket makers, the three big companies in the field —Alelo (Bradesco and Banco do Brasil), Ticket (Santander and Itaú), and Sodexo— try, through amendments with federal deputies, to modify the legislation that, in practice, put end to the buying and selling of vouchers and tries to break the concentration in this branch.

At this time, Congress only has to decide whether to extend the deadline set for regulating specific points of the law to May 2024.

The MP, foreseeing the new deadline, expires in September of this year without a ministry having defined the rules for the operation of the vouchers so far. Labor and Finance said they prefer to leave the issue for later because they are discussing structural reforms.

One of the points that requires regulation is portability. Therefore, it is up to the worker —and not the company— to choose the supplier of the voucher. The other is what obliges the ticket machines (which read the cards) to accept all vouchers, which is called interoperability. There are around 300 cards on the market.

parallel market

In the past, a law prohibited the purchase and sale of these tickets, a more sensitive point because companies transacted around BRL 150 billion in these transactions alone.

The business worked as follows: the Human Resources department bought vouchers with discounts of between 20% and 40%.

In other words: in addition to the tax exemption, the companies also gained from trading vouchers.

At the other end, the ticket collectors more than recovered the discounts by charging an administration fee from the establishments (basically restaurants) which varies between 7% and 9%.

In Congress, these companies, represented by ABBT (Brazilian Association of Employee Benefit Companies) and also by their shareholders, presented almost 60 amendments to the text of the MP under discussion at the moment. In practice, these amendments render the legislation ineffective.

When consulted, ABBT did not respond until the publication of this report.

With Diego Felix

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