Tax cases to take center stage in Supreme Court 2024 term

The chief justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court, Luís Roberto Barroso, opened the court’s first session of 2024 on Thursday, saying that after the Brasília riots grabbed all the attention at the beginning of 2023, Brazilian institutions would begin the new year with “normal concerns,” such as economic growth, education, and environmental protection, and operate “in full normality.”

Last year, when beginning his stint as head of the court, Chief Justice Barroso had already listed the country’s policy priorities, as if he were a head of state. During Thursday’s ceremony, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the areas mentioned were also the priorities of his administration.

However, the relationship between the legislative and judicial branches is not so harmonious. Recent police operations in the scope of investigations underway in the Supreme Court have fueled the desire of legislators affected by these investigations to retaliate against the judiciary. Allies of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, since mid-2023, have defended proposals to amend the Constitution and limit the powers of the justices.

This Thursday, the president of Congress, Senator Rodrigo Pacheco — who has been gesturing toward the pro-Bolsonaro camp recently — stated that “things seem to be returning to normal,” but mentioned that “no institution has a monopoly on defending democracy.” Justice Barroso had praised the senator, as well as the Armed Forces, which were very close to the anti-democratic agenda of Bolsonarism.

In this clash of branches of government, tax cases are of great interest to the Lula administration, which is hellbent on its efforts to raise funds to eliminate the public accounts deficit — a difficult mission to accomplish, as The Brazilian Report has shown.

Finance Minister Fernando Haddad expects the government to make a great deal of its revenue this year from the outcome of tax disputes. This prediction is viewed with skepticism by many analysts, but it has the support of Carlos Higino Ribeiro de Alencar, president of Brazil’s tax appeals court Carf.

“If we decide on half of the backlog of cases, if we judge BRL 600 billion [USD 121 billion], we arrive at this value [of BRL 54.7 billion predicted by the government]. Is it impossible to do that? It is not impossible, because there are many high-value cases,” Mr....