WHEN YOUR LAWYER IS YOUR COACH IN THE BRAZILIAN 5.9 KM ENDURANCE OF LAWS AND REGULATIONS

Each Brazilian corporation shall comply with an average of 3,507 pieces of legislation or 5.9 kilometers of rules if printed in A4 format, Arial 12. In case anyone reads and understands all these kilometers of legal provisions, don’t be too proud, for administrative and/or judicial bodies will be interpreting any of the articles, paragraphs, subparagraphs or items on that legal route and be changing their preview understandings quite regularly. The total cost for the country: circa R$45 billion. Companies that most benefit from the various and large opportunities of the Brazilian market are those better prepared to surf over the conundrum of Brazilian regulations. They apply the rule ‘My lawyer is certainly my best friend’.

 

Let’s be realistic: between 1988 and 2012 more than 4.6 million pieces of legislation have been adopted. That represents 788 new ones every single working day. More than 290 thousand related to tax regulation, or more than 1.41 new tax regulations every hour in every single working day. Of the total number of pieces of legislation adopted during that period, 13.02% (or 600,912) were still in force at the end of that period. Considering only tax regulations, 7.5% (or 21,820) were still in force in October 2012. During this same period each of the 26 Brazilian States (and the Federal District) adopted an average of 43.438 new pieces of legislation, or 7.42 per working day, while each municipality adopted an average of 560.91 new pieces of legislation per working day. The distribution of the 526 (of which 30 are tax regulations) pieces of legislation adopted every day in Brazil are as such: at federal level: 18 (3 are tax regulations); at state level: 134 (10 are tax regulations); at local level: 375 (17 are tax regulations). If one considers that every piece of tax legislation contains an average of 11.23 articles, 2.33 paragraphs, 7.45 subparagraphs and 0.98 items, that by October 2012 there were 245,037 articles, 570,937 paragraphs, 1,825,528 subparagraphs and 240,137 items in force  and that companies do not engage in business in every Brazilian State, each Brazilian corporation shall comply to an average of 3,507 pieces of legislation (39,384 articles, 91,764 paragraphs, 293,408 subparagraphs and 38,596 items) or 5.9 kilometers of rules if printed in A4 format, Arial 12. These and other data useful to understand the importance of legal and accounting services as matters of primary concern when setting up a company in Brazil can be found in https://www.ibpt.org.br/img/uploads/novelty/estudo/70/Em24AnosDeConstituicao46MilhoesDeNormasCriadas.pdf. Insomniacs may wish to read the book of 6.2 tons and 43,216 pages (2.2 height x 1.4 width) where a lawyer collected all the Brazilian tax legislation (Federal, 27 States and 5 thousand municipalities), [in Estadão].   Roberto Bedrikow  (September, 2013)