O debate acerca da constitucionalidade do instituto da contribuição tributária

Abstract

Tax substitution is an institute created with the purpose of facilitating the collection of taxes along production chains, mainly the Tax on Industrialized Products and the Tax on Circulation of Goods and Services. The institute shifts the responsibility for fulfilling the main obligation of the individual who actually materializes the triggering event, for an individual along the chain that is more convenient for the Administration, and is generally substantiated by the progressive and regressive variations, whose difference lies, simply explained, in whether the triggering event occurs after or before the collection of the tax, respectively. Although already positive both in the Constitution, by Constitutional Amendment nº 3, and by the National Tax Code, as well as already judged constitutional by the Federal Supreme Court and legal by the Superior Court of Justice, progressive tax substitution is still the subject of great tax debate, due to the strong accusations of damage to several tax principles, because, despite the transposition of responsibility for the main obligation being consensually accepted, the occurrence of the presumption of the taxable event in this modality is not. Thus, the doctrine is divided harshly into those who observe great outrage to the pillars of legal-tax thinking arising from the progressive ST and those who see in it the capacity of the State to carry out its collection in a more efficient way, enjoying its legislative freedom to determine who is more convenient, within reason and justifiable reason, as responsible for the payment of the tax. Thus, this work analyzes and exposes a reasonable bibliographic review of the doctrinal debate on the subject, as well as an adequate exposition of the jurisprudential position on the issue.