Tax Reform as an Instrument for the Effectiveness of Distributive Justice: a historical approach

Abstract

The article intends to reflect on the real need for a tax reform in Brazil and its use as an instrument for the realization of distributive justice. In order to do so, the doctrinal sources that seek to understand the reasons and the history of taxation are analyzed, which are fundamental notions to measure the tolerable limits that each society admits to bear as tax exoneration. Secondly, the common good is approached as the legitimacy of a fair taxation, taking into account that the causality between taxation and the common good, from an Aristotelian perspective, has always been a historical constant, evolving the very conception of the common good to justify taxation, as well as methods of tax rebates and collection. The formation of the Brazilian tax system, from the colonial period in Brazil, passing through the imperial period and the republican constitutions, is also an object of attention, as well as the obstacles that undergo the current model of the national tax system. Such study is necessary to search, through a Tax reform, the alternatives for the best realization of fundamental rights.