Enacted law that makes the CPF the only identification record

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sanctioned, with vetoes, Law nº 14.534/23, which establishes the Individual Taxpayer Registration number (CPF) as the only general registration number throughout the country, in order to be used to identify the citizen in public service databases. With the entry into force of the new law, the CPF must appear in the registers and documents of public agencies, civil registry or professional councils, as is the case with birth, marriage and death certificates, as well as in identification documents, of programs such as PIS and Pasep, identifications related to INSS, voter registration, military certificate, health cards, work card, National Driver’s License, among others. The law came into force after publication in the Official Gazette of the Union, but stipulates some deadlines for bodies and entities to adapt: ​​12 months to adjust systems and procedures for serving citizens; and 24 months for interoperability between the registers and the databases. Among the points vetoed by the Presidency is the one that dealt with exceptionalities and some attributions aimed at federal entities, under the justification that such situations could end up “restricting access to information and health services, if only this was required as a document of identification of the citizen, since there are cases in which foreigners and nationals do not have the Individual Taxpayer Registration number”. Also vetoed was the section that required the Federal Revenue Service to update its database every six months with some of the “electronic heartbeats” made by the Superior Electoral Court – a procedure that would be adopted to avoid duplication of CPF for the same person. Based on a manifestation by the Ministry of Finance, the Presidency argued that the proposal goes against the public interest, since the Federal Revenue Service, under an agreement for the exchange of information with the TST, “receives data from the Electoral Registry on a monthly basis, and has online access to the TSE database”. And, in return, it provides online access to the CPF database for the TSE. “In this sense, the measure would represent a step backwards when defining the period of 6 (six) months for the TSE to forward data from the Electoral Registry to the RFB, since in addition to not achieving the objective it proposes, it would jeopardize the work of qualifying data now carried out by the RFB”, justified the Presidency. Finally, the section that stipulated a period of 90 days for the Executive to regulate the new law was also vetoed. “The legislative proposal incurs a defect of unconstitutionality, considering that it marks a deadline for the Executive Branch to regulate the provisions of this proposal, which violates the principle of separation of powers”, justified the Presidency.

Agência Brasil