The Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes requested a review and suspended the judgment of the action brought by the government against the exemption from the payroll of 17 sectors of the economy and municipalities. So far, there are three votes to maintain the gradual repayment between 2025 and 2027. Moraes has up to 90 days to return the case for judgment.
The gradual reduction was established in dialogue between the Powers after the government questioned in the STF the law that extended the exemption without indicating an estimate of the fiscal impact and pointing out the sources of funding.
The rapporteur, Cristiano Zanin, voted to overturn the tax relief law, as he understood that it could not have been enacted without providing measures to compensate for the loss of revenue, but did not comment on the merits of the agreement – signed after the action had already been filed. Zanin’s vote has been followed, so far, by ministers Edson Fachin and Gilmar Mendes.
Continues after advertising
The AGU reported at the beginning of the year that, even with the agreement, there is a risk of loss of R$20.23 billion to the public coffers in 2025 due to the insufficiency of the measures adopted to compensate for the exemption. The body also said that the total negative impact of the exemption in 2024 was R$30.5 billion, while the collection measures totaled R$9.38 billion, which indicates a deficit, last year, of R$21.12 billion.
Without changing the current rule, the line proposed by Zanin does not resolve the loss estimated by the AGU. The discussion takes place at the same time that the economic team seeks to resolve the fiscal hole of around R$20.9 billion left by the rejection of the Provisional Measure (MP) that increased taxation on investments and bets and limited tax compensations – an alternative proposal to the increase in the Tax on Financial Operations (IOF), which, in turn, had been put on the table precisely to compensate for losses with the exemption.
The trial was held in the virtual plenary and began last Friday, the 17th. It was scheduled to end next Friday, the 24th.
