Income Tax 2026: Federal Revenue estimates that 2.2 million declarations fell into the fine mesh

The Federal Revenue Secretariat reported this Tuesday (2) that 5% of Income Tax declarations for 2026, the base year of 2025, fell into the so-called Leão fine mesh. There are around 2.2 million documents with pending issues.
The percentage of declarations in fine mesh, released by the Federal Revenue Income Tax supervisor, José Carlos da Fonseca, is similar to that recorded in recent years.
🔎When the declaration of the IR falls into the fine mesh, meaning that it is retained by the Tax Authorities due to pending issues related to data discrepancies (see what to do below in this report).
This year, the IR delivery deadline began on March 23rd and extended until May 29th. 44,393,571 declarations were submitted within the legal deadline.
Income Tax 2026: find out what to do if you missed the deadline to send the declaration
"We started the declaration period with almost 10% difference in mesh withholdings compared to previous years. We had a very high volume, at the end of March, almost 11% retained in mesh, when the normal was 8%, 9%", said José Carlos da Fonseca to g1.
"At the end of the period, this number was balanced. The percentage of declarations in mesh this year was very similar to last year. It was adjusting due to the corrections made by the companies", he continued.
Fine mesh declarations
Federal Revenue
Changes in 2026
The IR supervisor classified 2026 as being a "year of overcoming", due to the end of the Withholding Income Tax Declaration (Dirf), which had been used for decades in the IR declaration. In this document, companies informed the Tax Authorities and workers information about income.
With the end of the use of Dirf in 2026, the IRS began to search for information in other databases: e-Social, which concentrates labor, social security and tax information linked to the employee; and EFD-Reinf. This change caused errors in the information provided by companies and thousands of taxpayers fell through the cracks.
"This ended up causing many declarations to be messed up, and the pre-filled declaration presented conflicting information. But because the information that had been sent by companies to the IRS contained wrong classifications. We cannot generalize that all companies had problems, but a good number of companies had to rectify information", said the IR supervisor.
What to do if you fell through the cracks fina
According to the Federal Revenue, the procedure, for those who fall into the fine mesh, is the same as in recent years: the worker must search for the Federal Revenue's Virtual Taxpayer Assistance Center (e-CAC) on the internet.
Access is through the use of the gov.br account, at silver or gold levels.
Taxpayers must search, in the service, for "declarations and statements".
Then they must search for "My Income Tax", and consult the 2026 declaration.
➡️When entering the Virtual Service Center, the Federal Revenue Service will inform you of the discrepancy in the declaration retained in fine mesh, and how to resolve the problem.
In this case, according to the IR supervisor, the inconsistency may be the result of incorrect information provided by the taxpayer himself, by the company he works for (paying source) or even third parties (service providers).
If the worker has informed incorrect information, he You must send a rectifying statement to correct the information. As soon as this is done by the worker, his declaration leaves the fine mesh.
If the paying source, or a service provider (from which the taxpayer included an invoice in his declaration) made a mistake, the taxpayer must wait for the information to be rectified.
However, if the company does not correct the information sent, the taxpayer does not leave the mesh and will be able to send his receipts from January 2027 through e-CAC.
Before that, it is not possible send the documents as the companies will still be correcting the information, in which case the worker may leave the loop.
"Normally, 80% of loophole cases are resolved by the end of the year. From now until the end of the year, 80% of these 2.2 million that will remain in loophole either through company rectification or through adjustments made by the taxpayer himself. If the taxpayer thinks he didn't make a mistake and the company didn't correct it, from January 2027 he can attach all of them. documents, proof, via e-CAC of everything he declared", explained José Carlos Martins, from the Federal Revenue.

Source: G1