Source: ISTOÉ Dinheiro - SP - ECONOMY - 29/08/2009

Mauro Ricardo Machado Costa, São Paulo's finance secretary and governor José Serra's right hand, arouses extreme feelings. At the Palácio dos Bandeirantes, he is revered - according to Serra, competent in the task of raising tax collection and guaranteeing São Paulo sufficient resources for the continuity of investments.

But this fame contrasts with the public unpopularity built in the business world. Among the points of greatest disagreement is the tax substitution, a system that obliges the anticipation of the payment of ICMS due to a billing forecast, which, according to the entrepreneurs, generates distortions and injustices.

"The model is absurd and does not exist anywhere," Bridgestone-Firestone do Brasil president Humberto Gómez Rojo told DINHEIRO. “It encourages companies to flee to other states,” reinforced the president of the São Paulo Wholesale Trade Union of Drugs and Medicines, João Godoy Filho. "It's insanity," says Paulo Skaf, president of Fiesp.

Fierce charging is also likely to hit consumers. A decree from the São Paulo government will institute tax substitution on the electricity bill. Thus, energy distributors will have to collect ICMS in advance. "With this model, distributors will be able to pass on costs to consumers," says the director of the National Electricity Agency, Nelson Hubner. The criticisms, however, do not echo in the office of Mauro Ricardo.

"Only those who evade are upset with this regime", he says, noting that the collection increased by R $ 3 billion in 2008 thanks to the tax substitution. Mauro Ricardo also defends police actions, similar to those of the Federal Police against tax evaders. The luxury store Franziska Hübener, at Shopping Iguatemi, was fined R $ 12 million for tax evasion.

And the secretary usually even voices his controversies. He went so far as to say that “tax evaders should be nailed to the cross”, commenting that he “thought the sentence” of Eliana Tranchesi, owner of Daslu, to 94 years and six months in prison was small. Not even Petrobras was out of his sights - he recently charged R $ 600 million from the state company. Be the villain of the business community, be the good guy of Serra's team, Mauro Ricardo's energetic and sometimes controversial stance embodies the toughest finance secretary that São Paulo has ever had. Even if it costs you, every day, new enemies.

Even during the international crisis, São Paulo's tax revenue grew 1,3%, far exceeding the national average