Brazil’s tax code makes a massive tome. But that is about to change

Vinícios Leôncio's giant tax code materializes how baroque the country's tax laws can be. Photo: VLA

A book that weighs 15 tons, is seven-feet high, and contains nearly 50,000 pages. It exists in real life and is on display in Minas Gerais state in a hotel room — the only place where the author, tax lawyer Vinícios Leôncio, found enough space to house it.

And this ludicrously large book consists entirely of Brazilian tax laws.

An average of 35 new tax rules are written daily in Brazil, making the effort of learning them all — let alone how to apply them — an inglorious and almost impossible task. “As we speak, you can bet there is a new rule being made somewhere in the country,” says Mr. Leôncio, who runs a law firm specializing in taxes in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais.

It’s not uncommon for those who pay taxes not to know exactly what they’re paying, and those who collect not to know what they’re collecting. Even so, Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service is ruthless — it is nicknamed the “Lion” for its aggressiveness in finding possible collection errors.

Brazil has several different tax regimes at the federal, state, and municipal levels — which...

Amanda Audi

Amanda Audi is a journalist specializing in politics and human rights. She is the former executive director of Congresso em Foco and worked as a reporter for The Intercept Brasil, Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo, Gazeta do Povo, Poder360, among others. In 2019, she won the Comunique-se Award for best-written media reporter and won the Mulher Imprensa award for web journalism in 2020