Taxes are a fantastic instrument for power, for domination, for control of society. It serves basically to government officers (bureaucrats and politicians), and sometimes has a side effect — but not absolutely necessary — which is to allow the state to render public services.

For this reason, the people are never consulted when a raise in the tax burden is imposed. The people never discuss on the main instrument of domination of governments, which are the taxes.

When Kant imagined that if all countries were republican, war would end, since the peoples would never wish war, he believed that in republics — he was actually thinking of democracies —, the citizens, and not the government, would be the ones to define their destinies.

Not only have wars not ended with democracies, but the people never debate on the main instruments of domination of governments, which are the taxes.

And the government officers are aware of this, especially in Brazil, which has the highest tax burden in the world, if we consider the collected tax burden - 38% of GDP, according to IBDT — Instituto Brasileiro de Direito Tributário (Brazilian Institution of Tax Law — data), the tax burden provided for in legislation, but not collected due to informality and corruption (more or less 20% of GNP), and that which the citizen has to disburse in order to render himself public services (more or less 10% of GNP), corresponds to the difference between what is spent in the countries that render public services (civilized countries) and in the countries that do not render public services (emerging countries) to their population. The sum of the three items raises the “legal tax burden” to more than 60% of GNP.

Hence, the year-end "tax swindle" is understandable. The government had the whole year to discuss the tax question, at the National Congress, so that society could take part in this discussion.

The government, however, waited for 364 days of the year to elapse, and on the last day, it launched a package of "tax horrors", via Provisional Measure, in order to violently increase the fiscal burden on the service industry, and to withdraw even more the right to defense of taxpayers and to harm the small and medium taxpayers, who can no longer count on the two-degree guarantee, at the administrative instance, to object the fiscal arbitration.

The package of unpleasant surprises that hits the pocket of society, without society having the opportunity to defend itself — since it was decreed by only one man, the president f the Republic — arrives at the same moment that the presidential airplane arrives at the cost of US$ 57 million, purchase only, without considering maintenance costs, which are much higher than any international airplane rental for use on official government visits.

It arrives at the same time that people realize that: the country spent less on basic sanitation than for the purchase of this airplane; the gentlemen at the Parliament increase their representation budget much above inflation (25%); the STJ (Supreme Court) considerably increases the wages of its servants; and the press publishes reforms at the presidential "habitat". After all, the profits of the trickery are multiplied, all at the expense of the people, who are never called upon to express their opinion on tax matters.

Since the government knows that the people are revolted, in has introduced strong components to reduce the taxpayer’s right to defense in the Provisional Measures, because it is necessary to scare the taxpayers with increasingly higher measures, sanctions, and restrictions, to let them not even think of discussing any fiscal arbitrariness.

The government is not even able to disguise the fact that, every time it offers a finger to the citizen, it amputates his arm. When it offered non-cumulativeness of PIS and Cofins, it increased these taxes by over 50%, due to excessive calibration of the percentage. And now, in order to correct the individual tax schedule below inflation, i.e., without offering anything to the taxpayer, but even increasing the taxation above the accumulated inflation, which in the last two years of government was higher than 10%, it increased the taxation of income tax and social contribution over the segment of service providers by 25%, which today is the segment that offers most jobs in Brazil, and which does already differentiate from individuals by paying other taxes, such as PIS and Cofins.

At age 70, 46 years of which dedicated to the study of tax law, I am increasingly convinced that taxes have no social function. The people receive only — sometimes — the side effects of the taxes it is forced to hand over to the government, in public services, since the true function of taxes is to maintain the power holders and to meet the official profits, the privileges that the first class citizens (government officers) have in comparison to the second class (the people in general). Taxes are only the main instrument of government domination.

* Ives Gandra da Silva Martins, 70, is a Fiscal Attorney, Professor Emeritus of the Universidade Mackenzie, of UniFMU and of the Escola de Comando do Estado-Maior do Exército; he is the President of the Academia Paulista de Letras.