A administração tributária dos municípios do Ceará – análise empírica da capacidade estatal na arrecadação dos impostos sobre o patrimônio

Abstract

The present work examines differences between the 184 cities of Ceará, with the aim of investigating whether municipal tax administrations with professional bureaucracies have better performance in tax collection (PROPERTY TAX (IPTU), PROPERTY TRANSFERAL TAX (ITBI) , in the period from 2006 to 2016, from an exercise that estimates their revenue collection capabilities .A narrow definition of state capacity, proposed by Evans and Rauch was taken as reference. In order to isolate the size of professional bureaucracy in the tax administrations, the element used as proxy was the way revenue officers were hired (autonomy) to the position of "officer of municipal tax auditor or equivalent" (technical knowledge) carried out during the period under investigation by the municipalities of Ceará. As dependent variables, we used the tax revenue as a proportion of budgetary revenue and the collection of municipal taxes on property (IPTU and ITBI) as a proportion of the municipal revenue. The results indicate that the municipalities of Ceará with professionalization on tax administration performed better on tax collection when considering property taxes (IPTU and ITBI) and tax revenue.