Bank Transactions: Pathway to the Single Tax Ideal a Modern Tax Technology;The Brazilian Experience with a Bank Transactions Tax (1993-2007)
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MPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive Bank transactions: pathway to the single tax ideal A modern tax technology;the Brazilian experience with a bank transactions tax (1993-2007) Marcos Cintra Funda¸c~aoGetulio Vargas July 2009 Online at http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/16710/ MPRA Paper No. 16710, posted 10. August 2009 10:51 UTC Marcos Cintra with contributions by: Luiz Henrique S. Guimarães Paulo Euclides Rangel Luis Carlos da Silva Luigi Nese Bank Transactions: pathway to the Single Tax ideal A modern tax technology The Brazilian experience with a bank transactions tax (1993-2007) An exercise in second-best tax reform © 2009 by Marcos Cintra Cavalcanti de Albuquerque All rights reserved - 2 - Publication Catalog Information Author Marcos Cintra Bank Transactions Tax : pathway to the Single Tax ideal ISBN: 144218728X ISBNS: 9781442187283 2009 2nd edition (in English) 2003 1a edition (in Portuguese) No part of this book may be reproduced in any form. Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law Exclusive rights granted to the author - 3 - TABLE OF CONTENTS Opinions on the use of a bank transactions tax as a Single Tax...................................................9 PREFACE Tax paradigms, globalization, and the electronic age ................................................................11 1 THE SINGLE TAX ON BANK TRANSACTIONS • Single Tax on transactions ...................................................................................................23 • Cost effectiveness ................................................................................................................25 • The creation of the IPMF/CPMF ..........................................................................................28 • Turnover versus value-added taxes: distortions and advantages...........................................30 Productivity and competitiveness ....................................................................................30 Allocative Efficiency .......................................................................................................31 Enforcement and compliance...........................................................................................46 Differential incidence.......................................................................................................49 • Cumulativeness and the financial markets............................................................................52 • Rates, revenue, and evasion..................................................................................................54 • Strengthening the revenue-raising function of taxes.............................................................58 • The virtues of bank transaction taxes....................................................................................60 • Incidence and equity of bank transaction taxes.....................................................................63 • Single Tax: criticism and replies...........................................................................................70 Regressiveness.................................................................................................................70 Cumulativeness................................................................................................................70 Incentive to excessive vertical integration .......................................................................71 Discrimination against domestic production....................................................................71 Tax exporting...................................................................................................................72 Cluttering tax harmony ....................................................................................................72 Stimulus for banking disintermediation...........................................................................72 Social injustice.................................................................................................................73 Excessive indirect tax burden on consumer prices...........................................................73 Abandoning fiscal policy.................................................................................................73 Single tax base benefits property and wealth...................................................................74 Weakening the federative principle .................................................................................74 - 4 - 2 ALLOCATIVE EFFICIENCY AND MEASUREMENT OF THE IMPACT OF THE SINGLE TAX • The construction of the Brazilian input-output table for 2006 ............................................. 77 Physical input-output....................................................................................................... 77 Value input-output........................................................................................................... 79 Price input-output............................................................................................................ 80 • The simulation model and the statistical data base............................................................... 81 The construction of the input-output table....................................................................... 83 Simulation models........................................................................................................... 91 • Setting Rates for the Single Tax........................................................................................... 98 The Brazilian Tax Burden (2007/2008)......................................................................... 100 Single Tax: Estimating the Required Rate..................................................................... 102 • Simulation Results.............................................................................................................. 108 3 TAXATION IN BRAZIL • Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 126 • Brazil needs a new tax system ........................................................................................... 128 • Roberto Campos: the choice between “innovative insolence” and “perfecting the obsolete”.................................................................................................... 135 • The controversy between the Central Bank and the Federal Revenue on the CPMF ......... 144 • Setting rates for bank transaction taxes .............................................................................. 154 • The impurity of value-added taxes in Brazil ...................................................................... 158 • Tax compliance costs: a new field for research.................................................................. 162 • Argentina’s use of the bank transaction tax (1984-1992)................................................... 167 4 “FEDERAL SINGLE TAX”: A PLAUSIBLE FORMULA FOR TAX REFORM: ADOPTING BANK TRANSACTIONS AS THE PREDOMINANT BASE FOR FEDERAL TAXES • Object and Method ............................................................................................................ 170 • Tax reform at a deadlock.................................................................................................... 171 • Tax policy issues ................................................................................................................ 174 • The myth of a Single Tax................................................................................................... 176 • “Single” tax is not a single levy ......................................................................................... 178 • Prudence, preconceptions, and rational purpose................................................................. 180 • Globalization and tax harmonization.................................................................................. 182 • Foreign Investment............................................................................................................. 183 • Economic substantiveness of the tax base .......................................................................... 184 • Content of bank transactions .............................................................................................. 185 - 5 - • Deferred taxation of financial investments .........................................................................187 • Consumed income...............................................................................................................188 • Vices, luxuries, the environment, interventionist taxation..................................................188 • Property taxation.................................................................................................................190 • Regressiveness, progressiveness, proportionality, and neutrality .......................................191 • Who benefits? .....................................................................................................................193 • Quantitative leap and qualitative problems.........................................................................193 • Tax revenue: an essential function of the State. The permanent institution survives any circumstantial specialization........................................................................................195 • No tax is immune to evasion...............................................................................................196