A regressividade do sistema tributário brasileiro e seus efeitos sociais

Abstract

The study analyzed the structural regressiveness of the Brazilian tax system and investigated its effects on the social function of taxation, the ability-to-pay principle, and the State’s fiscal legitimacy. It started from the diagnosis that the national tax burden, historically concentrated on consumption taxes, fell disproportionately on middle- and lower-income groups, producing regressive effects and deepening social inequalities. The research, conducted through a hypothetical-deductive method, employed bibliographical, documentary, and comparative analysis based on data from the Federal Revenue Service, IPEA, the World Bank, and the OECD. The study examined the accumulated lag of the personal income tax brackets, the exemption of profits and dividends, the low level of taxation on wealth, and the absence of automatic inflation indexation mechanisms, demonstrating that these factors distorted progressivity and compressed labor income. It also observed that the modernization of tax enforcement, through digital data-crossing platforms, increased collection efficiency but did not alter the regressive core of the tax structure. The results indicated that tax regressiveness undermined fiscal justice, eroded trust in the tax bargain, and intensified the taxpayer’s sense of civic exhaustion. The study concluded that overcoming this crisis requires structural reforms capable of enhancing tax progressivity, reallocating the tax burden according to economic capacity, and restoring the social function of taxation as a foundation for the State’s democratic legitimacy.