Solar energy companies have difficulty releasing loads with the Federal Revenue

Federal Revenue inspectors are making it difficult to clear equipment for solar energy systems that have Ex-tariffs in Brazil, according to sources heard by Canal Solar. These situations are occurring in several locations, such as: Santos (SP), Itajaí (SC) and São Luís (MA).

Furthermore, this situation has been dragging on since the last quarter of last year and, according to reports, the incidence increased even more at the beginning of this year.

According to these sources, who asked not to have their names revealed for fear of suffering greater reprisals from inspectors, imports of modules that are entitled to the Ex-tariff benefit are stopping in the red channel much more than normal.

“Companies that supply photovoltaic equipment are at the mercy of this class that are not giving the slightest importance to the losses caused due to the stoppage of several processes in Brazilian ports”, said one of the sources.

When DI (Import Declaration) records enter the red channel, the SID (Electronic Fiscal Clearance System) requires the verification of documents linked to the import process. During this process, in addition to the document check, a physical inspection of the cargo is mandatory.

In other words, containers and/or volumes are opened to thoroughly check the characteristics of the merchandise present there, as well as weights, quantities, specifications and tax classification. After checking the transport documents, if there is no pending issue, the SID will assign the green channel to this DI (import declaration).

According to sources, this process is being hampered by auditors. Furthermore, they informed Canal Solar, the waiting period for cargo release, at best, is between 15 and 20 days, and in some cases it is taking up to 2 months for cargo release.

This slowness in releasing equipment impacts the delivery schedule of goods to customers, which ends up causing delays in the final delivery of photovoltaic projects.

“The cargo arrived on January 24th, on the 26th it showed a red channel. Just to be assigned to an inspector it took 10 days, after that another 8 days for inspection and, after the inspection, another 5 days passed without any response, after much insistence on our part the inspector informed that he had to carry out the inspection again because I had forgotten to take a photo of the license plate label”, reported one of the sources.

Another highlighted point is the cost that this entire process entails, since the reports required by inspectors must be prepared by engineers authorized by the Federal Revenue Service. This cost is around R$ 20 thousand to 30 thousand per skill.

Furthermore, one of the sources reported that while waiting for reports to be issued and the cargo to be released, the importer still bears the costs of demurrage (amount paid by the importer due to non-compliance with a clause contained in the sea transport bill) and the extremely high storage cost.

Still according to reports from these sources, auditors are making the release process difficult by looking for problems where there are none. “In some cases, they use outdated measurement tools. For example, they measure a module and say that it measures 1133 mm and that to release the Ex-tariff it needs to measure 1135 mm”, he said.

Product costs increase significantly and end up harming the importer and the end consumer. Reports lead us to believe that the Federal Revenue either does not have the technical and operational structure to carry out such inspections or is simply ignoring the problems caused to importers by its slowness and inefficiency.

It is to be agreed that the role of the Revenue is to monitor. The question is the time taken and the way in which this inspection has been carried out, resulting in abusive costs that are added to the process as a whole.