Lira says that Lula still does not have a vote to approve reforms – 06/03/2023 – Market

The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), told businessmen that the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) government still needs time to stabilize itself internally, organize a parliamentary base and find a path to pursue its agendas. in the economic area in Congress.

During a meeting with the Political and Social Council of the Commercial Association of São Paulo, this Monday (6), Lira said that Lula was democratically elected, but with a minimal margin of votes, and that the government does not have support in the Legislature or for approving laws by simple majority, much less to advance constitutional matters, as is the case of tax reform.

“We have a government that was elected with a minimal margin of votes and that needs to understand that we have an independent Central Bank, regulatory agencies, the State-Owned Companies Law and a Congress with broader attributions,” said Lira, indicating that Lula will have difficulty reviewing any of these themes.

His speech was applauded several times by the audience, which also included politicians.

Lira said that the government will not find it easy to approve the “so talked about, so difficult and so distressing” tax reform, an issue that depends on changes to the Constitution.

A working group to prepare a new proposal in this area was created by Lira, with the forecast of closing a new text on May 16th. The expectation was that the final proposal of this group would go straight to a vote in the Plenary. But the president of the Chamber defended that this text be voted on beforehand in a special commission and said that it may be revisited by the parliamentarians so that the best proposals can be extracted from there.

“We are going to pursue the possible reform in the tax matter. We will have to walk slowly. Nobody will reach the ideal reform”, stated Lira, who did not rule out that Congress also deal with the issue of payroll exemption.

The Lula government is considering including changes to the payroll in the second phase of the tax reform, which will deal with the Income Tax. The first phase unifies consumption taxation.

The president of the Chamber has said more than once that there is a willingness to vote on a proposal for administrative reform, a topic that has faced historical opposition from the PT.

Carf

Lira also said that he will meet this Monday with the executive secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Gabriel Galípolo, to discuss the attempt to reach an agreement between the government and the private sector on the issue of the tie-breaking vote in CARF (Administrative Council of Tax Appeals) trials. .

The Ministry of Finance body resumes its sessions this Tuesday (7) with some controversial judgments.

“I have a meeting with the secretary for him to explain what agreement was built outside the National Congress, with the provisional measure in progress, and we will analyze this issue”, he said.

“The Revenue insists on some theses that disfigure what we do, but the interpretive capacity of law firms often turns 8 into 8,000. We will seek to maintain the level of tranquility and guarantees without the excessive openings of one measure or another.”