Large private companies will have to hire an auditor

Large companies installed in Brazil, whether publicly traded or closed, will have to inform the Federal Revenue, as of 2014, which is the audit responsible for checking the numbers of their balance sheets.

According to the Institute of Independent Auditors of Brazil (Ibracon), responsible for the request that will make this information mandatory, the requirement has the potential to double the number of companies audited in the country.

Companies with annual gross sales above R $ 300 million or total assets above R $ 240 million, considered large companies by law, are already required to have their financial statements audited since 2008, as provided for in Law 11,638, 2007, the same that allowed the official introduction of the international IFRS accounting standard in Brazil.

However, as the law is unclear about the need for these large companies to publish their balance sheets, there was no way so far as to know whether this legal provision was being complied with.

Ibracon estimates that there are about 2 thousand Brazilian companies that meet the criteria established by law, but that do not have their balance sheets audited. "This includes both those who are unaware of the law and those who, if they know each other, do not pay much attention," said Eduardo Pocetti, president of Ibracon, who also recalls that the values ​​provided for in the law are fixed, and that many companies have grown these past five years.

"In our work it is common to find companies that earn more than R $ 300 million, which are not audited, and have never heard of CPC, IFRS etc."

Before Law 11.638, auditing was only mandatory for public limited companies registered as public companies with the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) and for regulated companies, such as financial institutions and insurance companies, although there are also voluntary clients, in addition to local subsidiaries of multinationals.

According to Ibracon, information about the auditor's name will have to be disclosed in the Sped Digital Accounting Bookkeeping module - which is a kind of annual accountability that companies deliver electronically to the IRS.

The inclusion of the mandatory field in Sped will be made in the 2014 declaration, referring to the 2013 financial year. This means that companies that do not have an auditor will have to rush to adapt.

Also according to Law 11.638, the audit work of the balance sheets of large companies must be mandatory by professionals registered with the CVM, which should prevent companies from using "facade" auditors to comply with the new requirement.

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According to Pocetti, the request for disclosure of this information on Sped was made by Ibracon to the IRS a year ago. And last week, the institute received a letter from the Ministry of Finance informing about the decision. "We showed the IRS that it was better to have more companies audited, more formalized."