Judicialization of the outstanding debt will become a last resort; measure aims to ease processes in Bahian courts

Bahians who owe taxes to the state, such as ICMS and IPVA, and have a debt of up to R$10,000 will no longer be in active debt until all extrajudicial resources for debt collection are exhausted. This is one of the solutions planned to be implemented through the agreement signed, on the morning of this Monday (21), by minister Luís Roberto Barroso, president of the National Council of Justice (CNJ) and the Federal Supreme Court (STF), and the President Cynthia Maria Pina Resende, president of the Court of Justice of Bahia (TJ-BA).

The Technical Cooperation Agreement was signed in the TJ-BA auditorium, around 12pm. According to the president of the STF, the document aims to put into practice the process of ‘dejudicialization’ of Brazilian life, which involves, among other ways, an alternative way of collecting tax debts by the state. The expectation is that more than 10 million tax foreclosures will be extinguished throughout Brazil through the commitment signed.

“We have more than 83 million processes underway in the country. There is no structure that can cope and the country does not have the resources to continue increasing the size of the judiciary indefinitely. […] We issued, in the CNJ, a resolution that provides for the extinction of all tax foreclosures of up to R$10,000, which do not have assets seized or summons from the debtor”, he highlighted.

In December last year, a similar agreement was made between the CNJ, TJ-BA, the Court of Auditors of the Municipalities of the State of Bahia (TCM-BA) and the Attorney General’s Office of the Municipality of Salvador (PGM-Salvador). The document provided for a reduction in the number of processes being processed at the TJ-BA, through the withdrawal of processes with no potential for recovery of the executed credit. Since then, 205,307 cases have been downloaded, as reported by judge Cynthia Maria Resende.

Before the CNJ issued Resolution 547/2024, debts of up to R$10,000 received the same legal weight as larger debts. Now, anyone who has an outstanding debt of up to this amount will not be prosecuted immediately. Before being charged in court, debtors will have the right to direct negotiation, protests at a notary’s office and even registration of the debt in defaulter registers, such as SPC and Serasa.

Despite the expansion of the range of options, lawyer Helder Santos, a specialist in Tax Law, warns that debts of up to R$10,000 will only stop being included in active debt if they have not gone through a judgment on the merits. “The debt continues to exist until it is extinguished by another way, such as prescription, as the idea is to encourage other means of collection and composition, aiming to relieve the courts that are full of processes without trial, since tax executions are the largest number of ongoing processes”, he explains.

For a tax foreclosure that has already been filed to be extinguished, the debt must be less than R$10,000, the process must not have been active for a year and there must be no prospect of assets for seizure.

To improve the flow of processes at TJ-BA, the agreement signed this Monday also establishes the automation of the flow of legal processes through the sharing of databases, information, technologies and research methods. According to judge Cynthia Maria Resende, carrying out this exchange will result in the five administrative public courts in Salvador having their demands ‘unburdened’.

“Each of these courts has around 25 thousand cases. So, this agreement that was signed today will facilitate the creation of the Justice Center 4.0, which is a digital center that will bring together the oldest TJ-BA cases to be judged by a group of judges and civil servants. I believe it will be positive, as it aims to speed up processes”, he states.

Automation will take place through integration between the Digital Platform of the Judiciary and the electronic systems used by the Public Prosecutor’s Offices, which should enable the mass management of judicial processes, such as the provision of information relating to death certificates, real charges and public deeds.

Finally, the agreement’s premise is the rationalization of justice, as it aims to identify actions with a high fiscal impact, in order to allow prioritization or even resolution of the conflict through the conclusion of a transaction or procedural legal transaction.