The recent publication of Normative Instruction RFB Nº. 2.278 has brought about a series of significant changes for the fintech ecosystem in Brazil, especially regarding the fight against crimes against the tax order, such as money laundering, asset concealment, and fraud.
Under the pretense of strengthening control and transparency, the Federal Revenue Service has made certain fintech obligations, particularly those of payment institutions and payment arrangement participants, equivalent to practices already established in the traditional banking sector in terms of financial reporting and tax supervision. In this context, it is essential for the stakeholders involved to be attentive to key points of the new regulation to understand its operational, legal, and strategic impacts.
In this scenario, we present five points of attention regarding the new regulation for fintechs.
1. Expansion of ancillary obligations and fiscal reporting duties: Normative Instruction RFB Nº. 2.278 significantly broadens the scope of ancillary obligations for fintechs, especially concerning the requirement to transmit detailed financial data of clients to the Federal Revenue Service. These obligations, previously restricted to banks and other institutions supervised by the Central Bank, now also apply to payment arrangement participants and other sectoral platforms. The tax impact is considerable: errors, omissions, or delays in information may lead to assessments and hefty fines, reinforcing the importance of tax compliance as a strategic pillar of these companies’ operations.
2. Intensification of data cross-checking and increased risk of assessments: With the expansion of fiscal information flows, the Federal Revenue Service substantially enhances its capacity for cross-checking financial data, optimizing the identification of inconsistencies, omitted revenue, and signs of abusive tax planning. The integration of reports transmitted by fintechs with other databases, such as e-Financeira, DIMOF, and DIRF, will result in greater visibility of transactions conducted by individuals and legal entities. Consequently, the tax environment for clients and fintechs themselves tends to become stricter, with a direct impact on the incidence of assessments for non-compliance with primary and ancillary obligations.
3. Limitations in the scope of the rule and challenges for tax legal certainty: Although it promotes a considerable expansion of tax control, Normative Instruction RFB Nº. 2.278 is primarily limited to information sharing, leaving gaps in the rules regarding the tax liability of fintechs for primary obligations arising from their users’ transactions. The absence of more robust regulation on withholding at source, tax substitution mechanisms, or criteria for joint liability may create uncertainties, especially in triangular relationships typical of digital environments. Building tax legal certainty for the sector, therefore, requires broader legislative debates and harmonization of the rules with the National Tax Code and other specific legislation.
4. Gradual adjustments in auditing and revenue collection instruments: The advancement of digitalization in financial services has imposed on the Federal Revenue Service the challenge of keeping up with technological innovations without losing revenue effectiveness. Within this context, the new regulation signals a gradual movement toward updating auditing instruments with the aim of closing loopholes for tax evasion, protecting the system from fraud, and ensuring effective control over the collection of taxes on electronic transactions. Therefore, the fintech sector should prepare itself not only for the formal fulfillment of ancillary obligations but also to adjust its business practices and tax governance to more automated and assertive auditing scenarios.
5. Impacts on tax competitiveness and fiscal efficiency: The adoption of standards equivalent to those of traditional financial institutions brings gains in transparency and mitigation of systemic fiscal risk, but may also impact the financial efficiency of fintechs, especially smaller ones or those with tighter margins. The increase in compliance costs, together with the risk of tax penalties for reporting failures, tends to raise the barrier to entry, which could reduce some of the dynamism and competition in the sector. It is therefore necessary for legislators and regulators to be attentive to adapting tax requirements to the operational capacity of fintechs, preventing counterproductive effects on financial inclusion and the development of innovative solutions.
Normative Instruction RFB Nº. 2.278 represents more than a mere procedural update: it is a true inflection point in tax policy directed at the fintech sector, nominally guided by the purpose of raising the level of transparency and curbing illicit practices in the national financial system.
