On April 14^th, 2020, a law that established a new milestone in the federal administrative process, through the extinction of the tiebreak vote by the representative of the National Treasury in collegiate judgments in the Administrative Council of Tax Appeals (CARF) was published – Law No. 13,988/20, article 28.

This provision extinguishes an unfair advantage of the Federal Tax Authorities in judgments in the CARF, which was exactly the regimental concession to the representative of the National Treasury in the Judging Panel, of the so-called quality vote. In addition, article 28 of the law in question goes further, establishing that, in the event of a tie in the judgment, the result will be considered favorable for the taxpayer.

The tiebreaker system through the quality vote unduly harmed the taxpayers, since, in the event of a tie, in practice, the result ended up being, almost entirely, in favor of the Federal Tax Authorities. There was a need for the taxpayer to convince a Federal Revenue’s representative to obtain a favorable decision at CARF, which significantly reduced his chances of success.

This change is extremely important in the CARF judgments system since, from now on, decisions will tend to be more just from a technical point of view, with much less emphasis on the tax effect that permeated these quality votes. It also opens up the possibility of changing several precedents that currently exist contrary to taxpayers.

Our team is available to assist in this and other tax law issues. For further information please contact our Tax Team by the following e-mails: rmarques@zaslaw.com.br or zaslaw@zaslaw.com.br.