Author: Martha Beck

Source: O Globo - Rio de Janeiro / RJ - ECONOMY - 05/06/2010

BRASILIA. Each Brazilian has already disbursed, on average, R $ 2,6 to pay taxes this year, but few know how much of this tax burden is embedded in everyday purchases.

A bill that has been in progress since 2007 tries to give more transparency to this process and determines that commercial establishments are obliged to inform, in the invoices, how much of the amount paid by consumers corresponds to taxes.

The proposal, however, is stuck. The text was approved in the Senate, but has been waiting for almost two years to enter the House's voting agenda.

According to one of the project's authors and vice president of the São Paulo Commercial Association, Guilherme Afif Domingos, this would be a simple measure, which would give the population the chance to know more precisely how much they pay taxes and demand from the government that money collected by Leão is better used: - The Brazilian tax system is very unfair, since most of the taxation is on consumption, not on income. The poorest are most penalized and few have any idea of ​​the size of this burden.

According to Afif, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who last week defended the Brazilian tax burden (which reached 35,8% of GDP in 2008), should “be ashamed of how he applies the money paid by the population”. The leader of the DEM in the Chamber, Paulo Bornhausen (SC), affirms that he already presented the project at the leaders' meeting, which decides the voting agenda of the Chamber, but did not find support: - I will continue to apply pressure so that this gets off the paper. The CPMF was only overthrown because the population knew how much they had to spend with the contribution. It is a matter of transparency and giving Brazilians more citizenship.

The leader of the PT in the Chamber, Cândido Vaccarezza (SP), says that he supports the project, but claims that it could only be put into practice with the approval of the tax reform, as the Brazilian system is extremely complex: - A company pays ISS , ICMS, in addition to federal taxes.

Not to mention the countless forms of incidence of each tax.

Tax reform simplifies the system, but there was no consensus to approve it.

Proposal received 1,5 million Afif support signatures, however, says that the amount that would have to appear on the invoices would be an approximate calculation of taxes, something that is already done by several research institutes. He recalls that the bill only regulates article 150 of the Federal Constitution, which requires consumers to be informed of how much tax they pay on their purchase. In addition, according to Afif, the proposal has already received 1,5 million support signatures to be approved.

For the taxpayer and study coordinator of the Brazilian Institute of Tax Planning (IBPT), Gilberto Amaral, there is no difficulty in implementing a system that separates the value of the tax from the price of the merchandise being sold. With the implementation of the electronic invoice, issuers of tax coupons would only have to add some information to the system.

- The citizen has the right to know how much he pays to the government and how this money is being returned in services - said Amaral.

In a survey conducted by the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp), 84% of respondents stated that they pay taxes, 12% that do not pay taxes and 4% that do not know or have not responded.

Encouraged to point out how much they think they pay in taxes, most respondents respond, on average, that R $ 2,55 in each R $ 10 spent on the purchase of products.

In the survey, most respondents said they believed they paid R $ 1,81 for every R $ 10 spent on sugar. This would be equivalent to a load of 18,1%. But, in fact, the built-in tax reaches R $ 1,94, that is, 19,4%.