Last week, the 1st Panel of the Superior Court of Justice, in the judgment of AREsp No. 2,001,082, established that expenses incurred by financial institutions with banking correspondents must be included in the calculation basis for PIS and COFINS.

Regarding the context of the discussion, the taxpayers claim that the expenses with the hiring of banking correspondents are effectively essential to carry out their financial activities, therefore falling within the concept of “expenses incurred in financial intermediation operations”, whose deduction from the PIS and COFINS bases is permitted by law, as provided for in article 3, § 6, I, “a”, of Law No. 9,718/1998.

It is worth noting that although Rapporteur Minister Gurgel de Faria emphasized that the issue under judgment would be new to the 1st Panel of the STJ, the issue was resolved unanimously, that is, without debate among the other member ministers. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the issue had already been discussed by the 2nd Panel, which also adopted an understanding contrary to the taxpayers.

Our team is available to provide any clarification on this topic.