Who is paying interests on own capital in Brazil?

Abstract

The publication of Law 9.249/95 created the possibility for companies to reward their stockholders by paying "Interest on Own Capital - IOC". This Law allows these payments to be considered as deductible expenses when calculating income and social contribution taxes. This fiscal innovation was accompanied by two other important novelties: a) reduction of basic and additional income tax rates charged on company profits; b) elimination of inflation effects from financial statements. This study, unpublished in Brazil, made it possible to know companies attitudes about using IOC legislation, and attempted to answer the following questions: a) are companies paying interest on own capital to their partners / stockholders? b) Which sector pays more IOC: industry, trade or services? c) Do Brazilian companies pay more IOC than foreign enterprises? d) Do publicly-traded companies pay more IOC than private companies? We assessed the publications of approximately 3,000 companies from all over Brazil, which attended to the following characteristics: a) published their financial statements in the media; b) are classified as industry, trade or service companies, excluding the financial sector; c) adopt real profit as a taxation base since, in general, companies using other bases of taxation cannot consider IOC payments as operational expenses. The result demonstrated that 40% of the companies have used IOC as a partner and stockholder payment or credit alternative. It was also found the existence of a rather balanced distribution among industrial, trade and service companies. Another important observation regards the increased number of public companies that started paying IOC to their stockholders.