Princípio da seletividade e essencialidade tributária: uma perspectiva libertária

Abstract

This paper aims to give a different approach to the principle of selectivity and the concept of essentiality based on libertarianism and Austrian economics. Nowadays, it s common sense that principle of selectivity is a sub-principle of the ability to pay principle used in taxes that could be shifted forward onto the consumers in the form of higher prices. Therefore, the ability to pay principle would be applied to the consumers. However, Austrian economics rejects this point of view by stating that prices are not subject to this dynamic. Rather, prices are set by the demand schedules of the consumers and the supply of the industrials in a general society, so it would be indifferent to the analysis of consumer s ability to pay. On the other side, the Brazilian Constitution establishes that, for IPI and ICMS, the tax burden should have an inverse variation according to the essentiality of products and services, so that superfluous goods would suffer a higher tax burden that the essential ones. Despite that, to libertarianism, the idea of superfluous or essential is inherent to the individuals and can only be identified by observing the concrete action in the world. Thus, it s not possible to say, a priori, which goods should have a higher or lower tax burden.