RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s decrease home has authorized a significant reform of the nation’s notoriously difficult tax system in a significant victory for leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who threw his weight behind the proposal.

The long-awaited tax reform goals to simplify the system, extensively thought of overly burdensome for each people and companies, and increase financial development that has drifted between downturns and doldrums for the final decade.

The reform will “facilitate funding,” tweeted Lula, who celebrated the proposal’s approval late Friday and thanked Congress.

The reform – initially authorized by deputies in July – needed to be voted on once more after the Senate made modifications to the textual content earlier than sending it again to the decrease home.

The constitutional modification handed simply by larger than 3-to-1 margins in each rounds of voting. When outcomes appeared on the enormous tv display in Congress, lawmakers reacted with cheers and applause.

“After greater than 40 years, the nation could have a contemporary, lean and environment friendly tax system that may change the nation’s economic system,” Speaker Arthur Lira tweeted, including that it’s not “the proper system, however one that may be authorized.”

Relations between Lula and Congress, dominated by Conservative lawmakers, have been strained. This week, Congress overturned a veto by Lula in order that it will probably reinstate laws that undoes protections of Indigenous peoples’ land rights.

And passage of the tax reform adopted report allocations of funds to lawmakers for initiatives of their dwelling states, revealing the federal government’s reliance on grants to drum up votes to advance its financial agenda.

However the adoption of the tax reform is nonetheless a win for Lula, whose administration made approval a precedence.

It follows one other current victory for the president, who nominated Justice Minister Flávio Dino to the Supreme Court docket. The Senate authorized that selection on Wednesday, regardless of opposition from lawmakers near former far-right chief Jair Bolsonaro.

The tax reform will merge the 5 essential levies into two value-added taxes: one federal and one other to be shared between states and municipalities.

Beneath the present system, the 5 essential taxes on consumption are collected at totally different ranges of presidency, with the 27 federal entities and greater than 5,500 municipalities imposing their very own, steadily up to date levies.

The system generates variations of interpretation, resulting in time-consuming lawsuits and requiring corporations to closely workers accounting departments. That reduces budgets for areas like analysis and growth and deters international funding.

The reform will now be signed into legislation in a joint session of Congress anticipated to happen subsequent week.