Bolsonaro wanted to expand import tax exemption – 04/15/2023 – Panel

In the last year of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, 2022, the Foreign Trade Secretariat and the Federal Revenue advanced in a discussion to increase from US$ 50 to US$ 75 or even US$ 100 the limit of import duty-free purchases in individual-to-individual shipments.

The idea of ​​the bodies of the Ministry of Economy, then led by Paulo Guedes, went in the opposite direction to the current proposal of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) government to propose the end of this exemption. The measure affects consumers of virtual stores such as Shein, Shopee and AliExpress, which are very popular among Brazilians.

The proposal was abandoned by the Bolsonaro government due to the proximity of the end of the administration. As it would generate wide repercussions, its implementation was postponed to 2023, in case of Bolsonaro’s re-election.

The project had the same principle as the increase in the limit for purchases in the free shop from US$ 500 to US$ 1,000, announced by the then president in 2019. The assessment of Bolsonaro’s economic team was that the cost of monitoring small purchases is high, it discourages economic activity and has little effect on smuggling, which operates at higher prices.

At the time, the Foreign Trade Secretariat prepared a comparative study that stated that the value of US$ 50 that serves as a limit in Brazil is low for international parameters.

Before that, Bolsonaro even wrote on his social networks that there was no possibility of raising taxes for purchases at Asian retailers.

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