BRAZILIAN TAX LAWS

Legislation
The Federal Constitution, articles 145 to 162, details the Brazilian Tax System. The Constitution establishes which taxes may be created, which level of government (Union, States or municipalities) is competent for each tax, the limitations on the taxing power, and the way that some of the revenues must be shared.
The article 146 determines that a suplementary law should establish general taxing rules. Such law is law nr., most often referred to as the Codigo Tributario Nacional - CTN (Federal Tax Code). Many of the articles of CTN were over ruled by posterior legislation (particularly those regulating State and municipal taxes), but the sections about general tax rules are still valid.
The States have competence to establish only three taxes (on heritages, on vehicles and on transactions of goods and services), but, because each State has autonomy to legislate, there is plenty of laws, decrees and other legal pieces about State taxes. For more information about State taxes, visit the official websites, which can be found by drilling down the geography section of this site.

The Secretaria da Receita Federal
In federal level, the body in charge of auditing federal taxes is the Secretaria da Receita Federal. Visit the site of Receita Federal in English.
Receita Federal is responsible for internal revenues and foreigner trade derived revenues (the Customs , as far as taxes go, is a department of Receita). Also, many of the social contributions mentioned in article 195 of Constitution are handled with by Receita Federal.

Receita Federal is a good source of information about Brazilian taxes. Below, some useful info.
Acronyms and abreviations Most common abreviations found in tax related texts and articles
Tax Competences table detailing the competences of each level of government to create taxes
Tax revenues sharing a share of federal taxes must go to States and municipalities; also, a share of State collected taxes must go to municipalities; this table details what happens
Comments on individuals income tax The income tax, both for individuals and corporations, is competence of federal government (there are no State income taxes in Brazil). This study brings some comments on this tax
Legislation Database This database, maintained by Receita Federal, is focused on tax matters; however, many other subjects, relative to several other Brazilian agencies (labor, social security, environment, etc) can be found by accessing the Sijut (third link on that page). Searches can be conducted by laws, decrees, topics, agencies, etc. Very useful.

Administrative appeals
There are two ways for tax payers to appeal from undue tax charges: in Justice or to the tax administration. The way that tax appeals are handled is established by Decree nr. 70.235, from March 6th 1972.

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