Adjustment to eSocial: steps for a secure transition

The Taxes, Social Security and Labor Obligations Digital Bookkeeping System (Sistema de Escrituração Digital das Obrigações Fiscais, Previdenciárias e Trabalhistas - “eSocial”) will unify the accounting of tax, social security and labor obligations provision of information, with the purpose of standardizing the procedures for transmission, validation, storage and distribution of employees, individual employees or individual taxpayer information. There will be many necessary adjustments before and during the deployment of eSocial. In light of this, Domingues e Pinho Contadores has drawn up the following list of procedures, so that your company may have a smooth transition.

1. Know your company

Before any adjustment procedure, a study on the routines that will somehow be involved with eSocial should be carried.

Knowledge of all to Human Resources - HR and the Personnel Department - DP processes is very important. As well as having full mastery of all company's business characteristics, because in this way we will know which routine should be influenced according to the new deployed work methodology.

2. Create managers awareness

There is a lot of work to be done, both for data collection and system set-up and for reestablishment of procedures and/or processes. It should be necessary to integrate all departments involved so that the company may meet the deadlines of this new way of working. In addition, awareness of the company’s management on the criticality of this project is extremely important.

As there are tasks of greater complexity that require a high level of specialized technical knowledge and demand a longer term for completion, the participation of a qualified professional to manage these works and to establish priorities becomes essential.

3. Review the personal department processes

The PD and HR’s whole routine must be adjusted to legislation.

It is relevant to check if:

a) the employees’ register form is updated;

b) the requested documents at hiring are enough to fill all eSocial fields;

c) the work leaves records are correctly performed within GFIP;

d) the items paid are being correctly taxed.

4. Give attention to the way the information is sent and its deadlines

Everyone involved must have knowledge of eSocial. It is noteworthy that this project does not change the labor and social security legislation. Nevertheless, the existing deadlines should be noted with greater caution, as the eSocial government agencies member receive the information immediately, and thus may easily detect non-compliance with the deadlines already established.

The hiring exam (Occupational Health Certificate - ASO), for example, should be performed before or at the latest at hiring date, in the lines of current legislation. However, the current fulfillment of this obligation only occurs by a physical analysis of the ASO, obligatorily in the presence of an Inspection authority of the Ministry of Labor (agency responsible to supervise the health and safety standards). With eSocial, we will have a sensitive change since the supervisory body should automatically verify that the exam is not performed on time. Among the events of Health and Safety (Saúde e Segurança do Trabalho - “SST”), there is the event "S-2220 - Occupational Health Monitoring", in which the employer must state the examination date, CRM and name of the doctor in charge, and other data.

The deployment schedule provides for the mandatory adoption of system in two phases: (i) from January 1, 2018, for companies with annual revenues greater than BRL 78 million (from 2016) and (ii) from of July 1, 2018, for other companies.

5. Perform the register qualification and provide the corrections

In fact, one of the initial works should be the sanitation of the employees' cadastral data. This process is called "qualificação cadastral" (register qualification), which basically is a comparison of name, CPF, date of birth and NIS information so that they are identical to the Federal Revenue, Social Security and Federal Savings Bank databases. This information will be the employee identification key. Any divergence blocks the transmission of eSocial events to the employee affects the provision of information within established deadline.

These differences are very common, such as people who change their name after marriage. In these cases, it is common to have a different name in the CPF register from the NIS register. Hence it is important the employer starts this work urgently.

6. Develop new processes and set deadlines

After being aware of the new rules and company processes, it is necessary to raise what still remain in disagreement with labor legislation, such as:

hiring, termination, retroactive contract amendment;

start of vacation joy and double payment failure;

overtime exceeding 2 hours;

lack of agreement on time bank or its compensation;

payment items with no discount for INSS, FGTS and IRRF;

incomplete registration of employee and their dependents;

do not comply with the safety and occupational health standards, as PPRA, PCMSO, CIPA and others;

positions and incompatible with the Brazilian Classification of Occupations (Classificação Brasileira de Ocupações - “CBO”) and the employees’ education level;

providing indirect benefits in a privileged way with undue taxation; and

allowance payment in disagreement with the law.

By submitting online information, the tax authority will automatically receive the company's data and identify all the procedures in non-compliance, and the company may be almost daily fined.

In this way, it is important to correct the practices and that new policies begin within the company routine.

7. Create an instruction guide

In order for the procedures to be well-known in the company, it is important to create an instruction guide with all deadlines and internal definitions.

This guide should be widely disclosed among employees to standardize the company’s policy avoiding separate treatment for identical cases.

Likewise, the responsibility of each department about the information to register at the eSocial system should be established, since the information filing should happen with different deadlines.

As the information will come from miscellaneous departments there should be a greater integration between them, such as Human Resources, Taxes, Financial, and Accounting.

8. Be aware of the Occupational Health and Safety (SST)

Another point of great attention is related to the Occupational Health and Safety events, which will be mandatory only after the first six months from the other events.

The employer must observe the effective fulfillment of this obligation, both companies with internal SST departments, for adequacy of systems and integration of all involved areas, and the companies that hire these services from third parties.

In cases of hiring third parties, the company must track whether the system used by the service provider meets the new requirements of eSocial, establishing responsibilities, and a clear communication for processing and filing the XML file. This follow-up is crucial, as the non-adjustment of the service provider's system must be a concern factor for contractor company.

9. Observe the transmission sequence of events and tables

A series of events and tables with workers and employers detailed information are provided at eSocial layouts. All this information should be concentrated and stored at the national eSocial environment. There should be a sequence that must be respected at transmission of these events and tables.

For example, filing an employee hiring event (S-2200), the employer should previously feed the eSocial environment with certain tables, such as the job table (S-1030) and the timesheet (S-1050), and others. Without this previous transmission of events, the employer will be unable to inform the hiring at the system.

10. Have the crossing information control

eSocial is not just a tool intended to unify all existing obligations (CAGED, GFIP, RAIS, CAT, and others). With this new obligation, we will have a significantly greater level of detail compared to the way this information is currently provided, and, consequently, a higher exposure of companies. Companies must have control of all delivered information, as any irregularities or inconsistencies should be undoubtedly easily detected.

As an example, we can compare to GFIP. Today, the employer states the calculation basis of social security contributions of each employee through this obligation without detailing to the RFB the items that made up this calculation basis. With the arrival of eSocial, the employer should state each payroll item (salary, commission, overtime, etc.) for each employee, and may use its own table of items, but always bound to a standardized eSocial items table with influences previously established. Thus, any different treatment of the company for a certain item should be easily detected.

11. Offer training to your professionals

The deployment of eSocial will bring a new reality to the professionals working in the area, as the initial work demand with the system set-up, data collection, formalization of processes, standardization of routines will increase, in other words, there will require technical capacity, specialization and knowledge of the legislation to fulfill the established deadlines.