ECF - General issues

The Tax-Accounting Bookkeeping (ECF), established in 2015 to replace the Statement of Economic and Tax Information of Legal Entity (Declaração de Informações Econômico-Fiscais da Pessoa Jurídica - “DIPJ”), is another module of the Public Digital Bookkeeping System (Sistema Público de Escrituração Digital - “Sped”), composed of 17 blocks aiming to present the calculation for Corporate Income Tax (Imposto de Renda da Pessoa Jurídica - “IRPJ”) and Social Contribution on Net Income (Contribuição Social sobre o Lucro Líquido - “CSLL”) during the period.

The ECF is ruled by the RFB Normative Instruction 1489/2014, which updated the RFB NI 1422/2013.

Requirement:

The ECF is mandatory for all legal entities, including immune and exempt, whether they are taxed by actual profit, arbitrated profit or presumed profit.

Those free from filing are:

I. legal entities opting for the Simples Nacional, under Complementary Law 123/2006;

II. public agencies, municipalities and public foundations;

III. inactive legal entities under the RFB Normative Instruction 1650/2015.

Deadline:

ECF should be annually filed to Sped by the last working day of July of the year following the base calendar year, using a digital certificate issued in Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure (Infraestrutura de Chaves Públicas Brasileira “ICP-Brasil”) standard.

In case of special events, termination, partial spin-off, total spin-off, merger, or incorporation, the ECF should be filed by the last business day of the third (3rd) month following that event.

This ECF filing requirement does not apply to the merging company for cases in which the legal entities, merging and incorporated are under the same corporate control since the year prior to the event.

It is noteworthy that in cases of termination, partial spin-off, total spin-off, merger, or incorporation from January to April of the calendar year, the ECF filing deadline shall be the last business day of July of that year (normal situations) for the prior year.

Adjustments

Brazil’s Federal Revenue (RFB) through RFB Normative Instruction 1770/2017, which entered into force on Dec-19-2017, established new rules for ECF correction.

The ECF correction shall be carried out by filing a new ECF, regardless the endorsement of an administrative authority, which shall keep the same nature as the previous one, replacing it integrally for all purposes and rights, and shall become the active bookkeeping at Sped database. The deadline for corrections is five (5) years.

We highlight the following points:

• The ECF rectification intended to change the tax regime, except for adopting the arbitrated profit purposes in cases established by the law, shall not be allowed.
• If the rectifying ECF changes the accounts balances of e-Lalur or e-Lacs part B, the legal entity should verify the requirement to rectify the ECF of the following calendar years.
• The legal entity should file the rectifying ECF whenever presents the substitute Digital Accounting Bookkeeping (Escrituração Contábil Digital - “ECD”) changing accounts or accounting balances recovered in the active ECF at the Sped database.
• For extemporaneous entries in ECD changing the IRPJ or CSLL calculation basis for the previous calendar year, the legal entity shall amend by rectifying ECF of the respective calendar year, through additions or exclusions to the net profit, even though the recovered ECD in the amended ECF has not been changed.
• The legal entity that files the rectifying ECF changing the IRPJ or CSLL values formely informed in the Federal Tax Credits and Debts Statement (Declaração de Débitos e Créditos de Tributos Federais - “DCTF”), should present rectifying DCTF.

What is the difference between ECF and ECD?

Digital Accounting Bookkeeping is also an integral part of SPED and has basically came to replace bookkeeping previously held on paper.

While the ECD was established for tax and social security purposes, the ECF is an additional statement designed to obtain information on all operations that may influence the CSLL and IRPJ amounts due.