Tributação extrafiscal no direito brasileiro: aplicações efetivas e perspectivas de otimização

Abstract

The financial aspect of the social and democratic state of law imposes a perspective focused on the financing of fundamental rights and the quest for balance between social justice and economic freedom. Taxation is interpreted from a broad perspective, because, besides providing the basic funding of the state apparatus, it functions as an intervention instrument in the economic and social spheres, providing the material resources for the state itself or third parties to implement public policy, and also guiding directly the choices of citizens in the interest of the common good. Among the functions that tax can take in this context, extrafiscality acquires prominence, seeking to accomplish, practical and immediately, state purposes in the various sectors of society, from the fundamental economic assumption that people respond to incentives. The complex inducing mechanism in which consists extrafiscality requires proper selection of elements potentially disruptive behavioral change, making the economic reality a real support for taxation measures. It is, therefore, an intersystem phenomenon, which should be seen as a bridge between the economic and the social orders. On the other hand, extrafiscal use of taxes, yet legitimized by the goal of achieving public policies in furtherance of fundamental rights cannot be manipulated in order to subvert the fundamental rights - instead of achieving them - or extrapolate the beacons imposed by the own constitutional order that authorizes it. Therefore, its main limits should be extracted from the constitutional principles which inform tax, economic, political and social orders. Within these beacons, extrafiscal function of taxes is widely applied in the national legal order, in order to promote, on one hand, regulation and economic development, and, on the other side, redistribution of income and social justice. However, there are other possibilities for the exploitation of extrafiscality, notoriously regarding environmental issues and the construction of a tax system more fair and progressive, designed to optimize the current public policies.