Tax system and income distribution in Brazil

• Grant number: 18/10497-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2018
• End date: July 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Monteiro Rugitsky
• Grantee: Angelo Kisil Marino
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 14/11611-3 - Public sphere and reconstruction: on the constitution of a reconstructive paradigm within Critical Theory, AP.TEM

Abstract

The relation between income and wealth distribution and taxation is increasingly present in the economic debate and, mainly after the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty, 2014), the issue has taken a prominent place even among economists who are in the mainstream. As it is well known, Brazil is a country marked by high social inequality and for some time the studies which have been developed correlate that problem with the characteristics of the national tax system. The existence of a tax burden on the average of countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which is higher than the taxes of the "developing countries", added to a big amount of social expenditure and the reproduction of such inequality is something that stimulates the continuous curiosity of researchers. The goal of the following essay is to analyze the existing studies related to this topic in a way to organize them with three main purposes. First, to understand the major characteristics of the Brazilian tax system vis-à-vis those from other countries, focusing on it's redistributive capacity; second, to deepen the economic theory about taxation; and third, to examine the implications of the theoretical debate for the evaluation of the Brazilian tax system. (AU)