Source: Tribuna da Bahia - BA - 01/10/2009

The delay in voting on the Solidary Taxation Project will not prevent the changes from taking effect in 2010. With the approval next week, the changes will take effect from the second week of next year. The Municipal Executive decided to postpone the election in the Chamber until next Wednesday (7), due to the importance for the city of the matter in question and the doubts still presented by some councilors - even after the marathon of presentations for clarification made since the last week by the Secretary of Finance, Flávio Mattos.

The proposal presented by Sefaz aims to promote some changes in the Tax and Income Code of the Municipality, “allowing taxation in which taxpayers who can do more, pay more with taxes than those with less capacity to contribute”, as Flávio Mattos explains. The project does not make a linear adjustment of taxes, but rather provides for the correction of values ​​only in the bands and classes with greater contributory power. In the case of the Tax on Services of Any Nature (ISS), the largest source of municipal revenue, there will not even be an increase in cargo. Only an increase, from 12 to 32, in the number of activities required to operate with tax substitution, that is, which will start to collect the tariff and pass it on to the City Hall, when they are borrowers of third party services.

For the Property and Urban Territorial Property Tax (IPTU), the forecast is that there will be an average change in the value of 10% for residential properties and 20% for non-residential properties. As for the Contribution for the Cost of Public Lighting Service (Cosip), the correction will only occur in the most advanced ranges of energy consumption (above 451 kW).

The Finance Secretary emphasizes that the project, in addition to promoting fiscal justice, should give a surplus of R $ 180 million in the Municipality's own revenue. Of this amount, the major part, about R $ 100 million, will come from the ISS, only due to the addition of segments in the tax substitution system, without any rate adjustment for the companies that collect it. Flávio Mattos recalls that the capital of Bahia, although it demands great resources because it is the third most populous city in the country, it is only the 25th in revenue per capita. “We cannot allow this distortion to continue, which penalizes our city so much”, he says.