Experts dispute the “tax exemption for pastors” narrative in 2022

This Wednesday (17), a series of news about the end of a supposed “tax exemption” for religious leaders, such as priests and pastors, which would have been granted during the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), was published in the press. The reason was the annulment, by the Federal Revenue, of an Interpretative Declaratory Act issued on July 29, 2022 by the then Revenue Secretary Julio César Vieira Gomes.

The measure allowed the interpretation of previous legislation that dealt with social security exemption for religious leaders in order to differentiate the amount received by priests and pastors as direct remuneration and the so-called “prebend” – financial remuneration granted for dedication to the pastoral ministry, which is not considered direct remuneration and, therefore, is exempt from social security contributions in accordance with Law 8,212/91.

This Wednesday, the body issued a new act suspending the effectiveness of the previous measure, issued during the Bolsonaro government. At first, even evangelical leaders were caught by surprise, as Brazilian legislation exempts religious institutions from collecting social security contributions on the amount paid as a prebend. Religious people, however, are not exempt from paying Income Tax.

With tempers cooled, the Evangelical Parliamentary Front consulted technicians and, in the early hours of this Thursday (18), issued a statement classifying the tax exemption statements given by Bolsonaro as false. “There has never been such an exemption for any minister of worship in any government”, says a note from the evangelical group.

“A brief consultation of the Income Tax Regulation undoes this fallacy that only aims to draw evangelicals into the debate to sharpen the opposing public opposition. Only one interpretative act was revoked that dealt with the pension issue of ministers whose corresponding law remains in force”, the note continues.

As Almir Pazinato Nanemann – from APN Assessoria Contábil, a company specializing in religious organizations – explains, law 10,170, sanctioned in 2000, does not consider the amounts spent by religious entities to priests as direct or indirect remuneration. In practice, this guarantees exemption from exclusively social security contributions, that is, there is no incidence of 20% of the value referring to INSS.

What happened in relation to the act published by the IRS technical team in July 2022 was an expansion of this exemption from the INSS employer quota to, in addition to the prebend, cover indirect benefits to religious leaders “based on criteria such as seniority in the institution, degree of education, irreducibility of values, number of dependents, hierarchical position and location of domicile”, according to the terms of the act.

“There was a distortion when it was said that the government had given a tax exemption. This has already existed since the year 2000 by law. The change made in 2022 clarified that there would also be no social security contribution for indirect benefits, such as housing assistance, transport assistance and education assistance, for example, which now ceases to exist. But there was never any talk about exemption from Income Tax”, explains Nanemann.

Even now, with the extinction of the declaratory act, the amount spent by religious entities to support pastors and priests continues to be exempt from social security contributions, since the exemption is a law in force, which has not been repealed.

Leandro Duarte Borges do Canto, a lawyer specializing in the Third Sector and religious institutions, reinforces that the revocation of the 2022 Interpretive Declaratory Act does not harm the rights previously established by law.

“This act came to clarify how the legislation should be interpreted. But its revocation does not bring any type of change to the legislation or the rights of the people who were covered. There was a law, and the Revenue indicated how it should be interpreted. But at a time when this is extinguished, it does not extinguish the legislation. The law is hierarchically superior to the act that is regulated by the Revenue, so one thing does not affect the other”, he explains.

Leader of the evangelical bench says that the act contributed to differentiating activities with and without INSS exemption

Deputy Sóstenes Cavalcante (PL-RJ), who presided over the evangelical bench between 2022 and part of 2023, stated this Thursday (18) that the annulment of the act that was in force until then facilitated the differentiation of the activities of pastors who fall under or not in the payment of social security contributions.

“This declaratory act [de 2022] it only came to clarify and separate priests who do not have a salary – that is, they are not CLT and live on a prebend – from priests who happen to have administrative activities, or are professors at seminaries or confessional schools. These are CLT
[possuem remuneração direta e, portanto, não estão isentos da contribuição
previdenciária]”, explains Sóstenes.

“This doubt has generated, in the past, especially during the Dilma government, an endless number of fines against religious institutions. With this declaratory act, Bolsonaro brought order to the house and resolved the problem to avoid illegal fines. In light of our Constitution, all religious institutions are immune from taxes. But the CNPJ [das instituições] It has nothing to do with priests, who are natural persons: priests pay their income taxes like any Brazilian citizen. And if he is just a priest, he pays his social security as a self-employed person”, he continues.