O ICMS e a boa-fé nas operações com empresas inidôneas

Abstract

In commercial transactions, goods are often traded with suppliers and customers companies that are further declared unfaithful by State Tax Authorities, in situations that the seller is not aware of the disreputable status by the time of transactions. Our goal is to present a general overview of ICMS in commercial transactions, in order to analyze the applicability of good faith in commercial relations, especially with regards to Tax Law. Also, we intend to demonstrate the standard for good faith to be proven, as a way to exclude tax responsibility arised from transactions established with companies that were further declared disreputable. We must analyze the purchase of goods from disreputable suppliers and the right of ICMS credits, due to the non cumulative system, as well as interstate sales intended to disreputable customers and the seller’s bond to collect remittee’s ICMS rate difal, which has not been collected. Therefore, good faith represents a needful element in commercial operations, in order to avoid tax consequences resulted from transactions with customers and suppliers later declared disreputable by Tax Authorities. Good faith must be effectively proved to exclude tax responsibility of these transactions, which might refer to the investigation of the client’s tax situation in the period of the transaction, and to the precautions taken to ensure transactions’ regularity