A equidade na distribuição das cargas tributárias das companhias abertas brasileiras pela legislação e os princípios constitucionais: uma análise por meio da Demonstração do valor Adicionado (DVA)

Abstract

The goal of this research was to verify whether the tax burden (at the national, federal, state and municipal levels) imposed on Brazilian public companies in the years 2017, 2018 and 2019 was distributed by the legislation in an equitable way, under the accounting criterion of the wealth generated by the entities and according to the principles established in the Federal Constitution of 1988, via a quantitative analysis carried out through the financial information disclosed in the value added statement (VAS). This study sought to contribute to the development of an accounting methodology aimed at evaluating the effects of the Brazilian tax system on companies, with a focus on measuring the level of equity achieved by ordinary law. The quantitative research used descriptive and inferential statistics, with a predominance of nonparametric methods, using Spearman's coefficients and the Median test, in addition to multiple linear regression. The tax burdens were calculated using the average rates resulting from the division between the taxes due and the following proxies used to estimate taxable wealth: the total value added for national and federal taxes; the net value added for state taxes; and the gross revenue for municipal taxes. Among the results and conclusions are the following: 1) there was a strong correlation (greater than 0.87) between the national taxes due and the total value added (national taxable wealth proxy) of the surveyed companies, indicating that the national tax system divided the burden of taxes equally among these taxpayers; 2) at the national level, the total value added explained the variation in the amount of taxes due in the three years surveyed by more than 90% (adjusted R2 > 0.9), pointing to the relevance of the VAS information for tax analysis purposes; 3) the sector of economic activity was confirmed as the main criterion used by the legislation in differentiating the tax burdens of entities (p-values less than or equal to 0.002); 4) progressivity was not observed in the companies' tax burdens, either in relation to the proxies of taxable wealth or the company’s size measured by gross revenue; 5) the medians of the variable called relative tax sacrifice showed statistically significant differences in the economic sectors, indicating that the tax system absorbed the maximum contributory capacity of companies in different percentages, so that there were activities more sacrificed than others in tax terms; 6) in respect of essentiality, statistics pointed to higher state taxation (predominantly ICMS) related to essential goods or services compared to non-essential ones; 7) it was found that the maximum rates of Simples Nacional regime exceeded the median of taxation imposed on large companies surveyed, indicating the existence of small companies not favored at the national, federal, state and municipal levels; and 8) the medians of the federal tax burden of the most labor-intensive companies did not present statistically significant differences in relation to the other companies, ruling out the hypothesis of the negative influence of the taxation levied on the payroll regarding the valorization of human work