Opinion – Helio Beltrão: A good initiative against tax abuses

Congress should soon appreciate the promising PLP 17/2022, which creates the so-called “Tax Payer Defense Code”. The objective is to enumerate certain fundamental rights of the taxpayer and to curb tax abuses, without affecting the ability to collect what is owed.

The relationship between the taxpayer and the Public Treasury is grossly asymmetrical. On the one hand, the monopoly of coercion in the hands of the State, legislation whose logic favors the public sector, the interpretation of the multiplicity of conflicting rules at the discretion of the tax authorities, the courts formed by public servants, which violate the principle of equidistance between the parties (for example, they receive their salaries with the proceeds of the collection).

On the other hand, subordinate by nature, and guilty by the presumption of bad faith, the taxpayer, wounded even in the nomenclature. “They take everything from me by force, and then they call me a taxpayer”, pointed out Millôr Fernandes.

The tax authorities continually implement their “tax reforms” by devising new interpretations that make additional eccentric assessments possible. The tax asylum in the three spheres of government is a sword in the neck of the crestfallen taxpayer.

Ten years ago, a Minas Gerais lawyer launched the “biggest book in the world”, a 41,000-page compendium with a two-meter spine, weighing the equivalent of two rhinos. The book contains 275,000 tax rules (since 1988), a pace of 33 new rules created per day (each with 3,000 words on average). Ten years later, we reached 450,000 tax rules, that is, the rhino couple already has an adult child and is expecting one more.

It is suggestive that the taxpayer cannot claim ignorance of the rules in his defense. If you fail to comply with a single rule, there is a risk of a fine and a fine. On the other hand, the tax authorities are not liable if they are assessed based on interpretations that differ from the jurisprudence of the STJ and STF. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Public Treasury and companies dispute more than R$6 trillion in tax litigation. The text of the PLP corrects this asymmetry, but the powerful lobby of inspectors and the Internal Revenue Service incessantly tries to remove this responsibility for amendments.

The IRS is supposedly the most efficient government agency: the collection has already exceeded BRL 1,500,000,000,000.00 (1.5 trillion reais) from January until now, or BRL 15,000.00 paid by an economically active citizen, in average. Although they enjoy all the privileges held by public servants, inspectors earn performance bonuses, which encourage improper assessments and collections. It is a system that goes back to the Roman Empire, which auctioned off the task of collecting taxes in the provinces to publicans, who became partners in the expropriation of private property.

Over time, the tax authorities became Big Brother. Before, the citizen made a statement about what he needed to pay. Today, the Internal Revenue Service is already preparing the declaration and makes extensive use of the instrument of forcing companies and banks to withhold taxes “at source”, extracting from the citizen before he receives it (ironically, the tax at source was invented and led by Milton Friedman when he was an employee of the US government during World War II).

The IRS knows everything about Brazilians: the movement of bank accounts, where the money is, how much the subject receives in dividends, shareholdings, his property registration, etc.

Paradoxically, Brazilians do not seem to feel enslaved or watched. Our ancestors hated taxes with great passion and died in revolts such as the Inconfidência Mineira, the Farroupilha Revolution or even Canudos, among others. The history of liberty is the history against taxes and their methods. Perhaps seduced by socialism in the 20th century, we lost our verve. All? Not. A small village of irreducible liberals still resists the invader.

​Approve the Tax Payer Defense Code.