A injusta regressividade na imposição indireta

Abstract

Discussions on justice in taxation are traditionally related to the equitable distribution of the tax burden through a criterion accepted by the social group, criterion that usually corresponds to the ability to pay. The confrontation of current issues related to justice in taxation, however, requires new perspectives to be considered, especially if we are supposed to reflect on the role that taxation can exert when intervening in the distribution of social goods according to the philosophical paradigm that guides the vision of the community about what can be reputedly socially just. Given the main theories of justice developed in the modern era, the objective of this dissertation is to determine what can be considered an equitable distribution of the fiscal burden as per the liberal-egalitarian guideline extracted from articles 3 and 145, first paragraph, of the Brazilian Constitution, to preclude arrangements that give a regressive characteristic to the Brazilian tax system. Given that the Brazilian tax system is regressive due to the expressive participation of indirect taxes in the Brazilian tax to gross domestic product ratio, the legitimacy of choosing such form of imposition as the main source of tax collection should be questioned, especially if considered the correspondence between regressive taxes and social and economic inequality. Once we have demonstrated the injustice of a regressive tax system, mechanisms should be adopted for its correction through the coherent use of tax selectivity, as well as adjustments such as the reduction of the tax burden upon indirect taxes with the correspondent increase of income tax in the gross domestic product ratio.