ICMS: REPERCUSSÕES ECONÔMICAS DA TRIBUTAÇÃO INTERESTADUAL E ALTERNATIVAS DE MUDANÇA

Abstract

There is a great discussion in Brazil about a lot of questions concerning the State tax called "Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias e Prestação de Serviços de Transportes e Comunicações (ICMS)". This article examines some of these questions, mainly the one related to the receipt distribution among the twenty six States and the Federal District. The State share on receipts of this tax, since the ICM creation (the tax replaced by the ICMS, with the 1988 Federal Constitution), is based on differential rates, used when transactions are performed by tax payers from a State different to the one where the buyers are. The article shows that this mechanism should be changed because it causes problems with econo[1]mic decisions about localization of production or / and distribution units. The author carried out a research on the major 5.000 tax payers of Pernambuco, on the year of 1996, and found evidence that there is a correlation between the differential rates and the level of tax, measured by the relation between tax and value added of the economic unit. So, the kind of taxation adopted by the States on Brazil is in favor of the Southeast region, where there is half of...