Tributação ambiental no Brasil: política de estado à luz dos limites constitucionais

Abstract

According to Article 225 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988, everyone has the right to an ecologically balanced environment. To fulfill this task, the federated entities, adopting a worldwide trend, have been using environmental taxation as a way to pursue that fundamental right. However, in Chapter I of Title VI – Da Tributação e do Orçamento da Constituição –, in its original formation, there was no explicit correlation between taxation and the environment, and it was up to the ordinary legislator and the public administrator to elastify the constitutional rules concerning taxation, promoting its purpose as an environmental protective measure. Such procedure, despite not being forbidden by contemporary Constitutional Hermeneutics, must have guidelines so that there is no etymological rupture of the constitutional text and denaturation of the taxpayer's fundamental rights, defined in the National Tax System. In this scenario, it will be revealed in this study that, in states and municipalities, environmental taxation is carried out in a diffuse and distorted manner, that is, as a government policy, disqualifying the potential of this instrument as an efficient tool to protect the environment. Therefore, it will be argued that environmental taxation in Brazil should be achieved by means of a federal tax, specifically by the synergy between the Economic Intervention Tax on the Importation and Trading of Oil and Derivatives, Natural Gas and its Derivatives and Combustible Ethanol – CIDE-Fuels – and the Social Security Tax on Gross Revenue – CPRB, with mandatory, perennial and uniform application throughout the national territory, thus becoming a state policy. The method of approach of this study will be carried out through the analysis of bibliographic sources, which will allow a thorough and general knowledge of the subject, so that a new approach to environmental taxation in Brazil can be drawn, reaching conclusions that may serve as basis for future researches. The conclusions will be obtained by the hypothetical-deductive method, considering that this work arises in the absence of environmental taxation forecast in the Federal Constitution of 1988 in its original formation and in the subsequent constitutional changes that explicitly established this right as a fundamental one to be achieved through the CIDE-Fuels. On the methods of procedures adopted, a historical study of Environmental Law will be developed, based on the documentary analysis of the legal framework of the National Environmental Policy and of the Stolcomo Conference, the proceedings of the National Constituent Assembly and the subsequent proposal for a constitutional amendment that proposed, from our perspective, the inclusion of environmental taxation in the National Tax System, with the possibility of promoting the recycling of revenues through the CPRB. To achieve the results, the comparative, typological and structuralist methods will be applied in the comparative study of environmental taxation in other countries, suggesting an ideal model for the Brazilian reality.