Resistência fiscal, democracia e educação tributária: fundamentos para uma fiscalidade democrático-participativa por meio de uma “pedagogia fiscal”

Abstract

The so-called “tax resistance” can be understood as any and all social opposition to tax policies, being a phenomenon that has always accompanied the fiscal activity of the State, in the dialectic between the power to tax and the rights of the taxed. Sometimes we perceive such phenomenon as an organized activity of society, based on historical rights as the right of resistance, or corresponding to “mere” transgression of the tax law. In the Brazilian case, the phenomenon of tax resistance in the reiterated discourse of demonization of the fiscal State, always portrayed as a ruthless extorter, naturalizing the social opposition to taxes or even making it imperceptible. In this sense, the present research has as object to investigate the phenomenon of fiscal resistance, seeking also for alternatives to its solution or, at least, reduction, mainly through the so-called fiscal education. First, it gives form and content to a concept of fiscal resistance, delimiting how this concept relates to already consolidated concepts, such as the right of resistance, civil disobedience, objection of conscience, political strike, among others. Next, the "modalities" of resistance verifiable in Brazil, especially in the hypothesis of tax planning, simulation/evasion and fiscal delusion, are delimited. Lastly, financial pedagogy, as a discipline of education rather than law, is raised as a way of getting round the problem of resistance, especially in view of the way fiscal Municipalities, here defended with more favorable space for a “fiscal citizenship”. The methodology followed the reading of works of doctrine on the subject, notably in the foreign legal literature, especially in matters of financial psychology and sociology, as well as documentary research in the legislation, as well as in established jurisprudence. It was concluded, mainly, of the studies, that: a) Brazil experiences a phenomenon of patent denial of the Treasury; b) the tax resistance is still a part of this problem; c) the fiscal education, as a practice of a true financial pedagogy, is shown as an effective tool to simultaneously provide less resistance and greater fiscal democracy, since history itself has denoted these as inversely proportional realities; and d) the municipalities, due to their obvious proximity to the population, appear as a more propitious space for public policies in fiscal education.