Lifetime: INSS may give up R$54 billion in shares – 04/04/2024 – Market

The INSS (National Social Security Institute) may forgo charging around R$54 billion from retirees and pensioners who went to court asking for a review of their entire lives.

The amount refers to the loss fees and procedural costs of the actions to be charged to the insured in the event of defeat.

During a session at the STF (Supreme Federal Court) this Wednesday (3), minister Dias Toffoli said that he contacted Jorge Messias, attorney general of the Union, to suggest that the INSS waive the amount.

According to him, there are more than 3 million lawsuits in court, totaling R$540 billion in fees. Considering that the whole life review thesis was overturned, policyholders would have to pay 10% of this amount to the INSS. Institutes for the defense of retirees contest and speak of around 100 thousand actions.

Two weeks ago, when judging two actions from 1999, the STF overturned the court’s own understanding that authorized the review of the entire life. It now remains for the Supreme Court to decide on the INSS’s appeal against the review itself.

The trial was scheduled to take place last Wednesday (3), but the president of the court, minister Luís Roberto Barroso, withdrew the agenda. According to the court’s office, the postponement occurred at the request of the rapporteur, Minister Alexandre de Moraes. There is no forecast for the topic to return to the plenary.

It will be up to the STF collegiate to decide what will happen with the actions of those who went to court to have the correction, which have been stopped since last year.

Furthermore, the ministers will have to take a position on who has already won the case in the Judiciary. In this case, the question is whether those who are already receiving the higher pension will have to return amounts to the federal government.

The social security institutes IBDP (Brazilian Institute of Social Security Law) and Ieprev (Institute of Social Security Studies) are filing separate petitions so that the result of the 2022 trial is maintained — that is, so that a lifetime review is possible — and so that the votes of retired ministers Rosa Weber and Ricardo Lewandowski be considered in the appeal.

If the court’s understanding in 2022 and the 1999 action are not allowed to coexist, the lawyers ask that retirees who obtained a review in court do not need to return the amount already received.

In the IBDP request, there is also a request that, if the INSS does not waive the fees and costs of the proceedings, the STF decides in the judgment of the embargoes in favor of the retirees and against the payment of these amounts by those who were defeated in the action.

UNDERSTAND THE WHOLE LIFE REVIEW

This is a legal process in which INSS retirees ask to include old salaries — paid in currencies other than the Real — in the retirement calculation.

The reason why the right to correction is being discussed is the approval of law 9,876, of 1999, which created the social security factor and changed the rule for calculating the average salary, the basis of INSS benefits.

The pension reform of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government introduced a transition rule that benefited new insured people and harmed some of those who were already in the job market.

By law, those who joined Social Security until November 26, 1999 have their average salary calculated with the 80% of the highest contributions from July 1994, when the Real Plan came into force.

But those who started contributing to the INSS from November 27, 1999 and reached the conditions to retire by November 12, 2019 have the average salary calculated on the 80% highest salaries of their entire working life — therefore, life all.

Throughout the process, the INSS argued that approval of the review would affect the fiscal balance of the pension system.

According to the fiscal risk annex of the PLDO (Budget Guidelines Bill) of 2024, the impact was estimated at R$480 billion, a value disputed by retiree defense institutes.

HOW WAS THE JUDGMENT THAT TOOK DOWN THE WHOLE LIFE REVIEW

On March 21, by 7 votes to 4, the STF overturned the court’s own understanding that authorized the review of the entire life. The turnaround occurred during the trial of two actions from 1999, which had been stopped for 25 years.

In one of them, 7 of the 11 ministers understood that the transitional rule of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) government’s pension reform is constitutional and mandatory and that retirees do not have the right to opt for a rule other than the permanent one, even if more advantageous, thesis proposed in the whole life review.