Author: Ives Gandra Martins

Source: Jornal do Brasil - RJ, 01/07/2009

Ives Gandra Martins, law professor and writer

The Brazilian tax burden is admittedly high. Compared with the overwhelming majority of emerging countries, it is well above the average, despite the fact that national public services are of poor quality.

On the other hand, the government's disincentive to the private sector is alarming. Although the supreme law provides immunity for nonprofit institutions operating in these sectors, the favorite sport of the farm authorities is to deny them their constitutional right, drawing up cyclopean infraction notices.

According to the vice president of the National Confederation of Educational Institutions (Confenen), 6 schools have been closed recently.

Brazil, on the other hand, remains in 1st place in the ranking of useless demands of bureaucracy.

It is not without reason that the Super Simple has been the main reason why most companies that are formed resist a few years.

The judicial measures themselves for the State to return what does not belong to it are an ordeal, in the face of judicial complacency with clearly delaying measures by the Treasury.

It is true that when the taxpayer deposits sums in court to discuss his rights, these resources, in 24 hours, are transformed into government revenue.

In this context, which transforms Brazil into the Republic of Bureaucracy, the number of civil servants increases in a fantastic way, remembering that the whole effort of Fernando Henrique to reduce the number of employees from 661.100, in 1995, to 598.500, in 2002, was canceled by the Lula government, which raised them to 670.800.

It should be remembered that the Planalto Palace has more than 3.400 civil servants, while President Obama, in the White House, has only 1.800.

The country is no longer evolving due to the bureaucratic obstacle institutionalized by the government, to the point that the little more than 1,5 million active and inactive employees of the Union will receive almost R $ 160 billion in salaries in 2009. The more than 11 million Bolsa Família beneficiaries will receive just over R $ 10 billion, that is, 15 times less.

Now, the non-governmental citizens, who constitute the manifest majority of the nation, are the ones who have to bear an almost confiscatory tax burden in order to sustain the very sclerotic official machine.

I am increasingly convinced that the Brazilian citizen is an authentic slave of the land of today, destined to support, with his work and taxes, those who control the government. In addition, the category of those entering public service grows considerably every day, not through the difficult door of the public tender, but only because they are friends of the king, swelling a machine that remains inoperative.

The governmental justification that the number of public servants in our country is not high, when compared to that existing in Germany, Ireland and France, fails due to the quality of public services that are provided in these countries, far above that of Brazil.

I believe that the Gordian knot of Brazilian development resides in how the future government, whatever it may be, will solve this problem, since the exit from the world economic crisis will demand an ever greater business competitiveness.

Either Brazil reduces its bureaucracy or the bureaucracy will reduce national growth and our taxes will be almost entirely destined only to sustain it.