Os ciclos orçamentários políticos brasileiros desde o Plano Real: uma análise de eventuais abusos do poder de tributar na União

Abstract

The doctrine of budget political cycles argues that, in periods close to elections, political agents adopt behaviors aimed at their electoral interests, increasing the volume of apparent investments and avoiding adopting measures that may increase taxation. Although the bibliography notes the increase of investments in these periods and the tendency not to adopt measures that would increase taxation, the Brazilian literature is scarce regarding the possible use of the power to tax, to reduce the volume of tax revenues. These periods are called budget electoral cycles or political budget cycles and they are periods in which the political agents, aiming for better performances in elections, can avail themselves of opportunistic behaviors, using the power to tax for electoral benefits. Thus, from a bibliographical review and a statistical analysis, all the revenues of the Union were analyzed month by month since the implementation of the real plan, focusing on the effects of elections in the amount collected. Also, the data related to GDP (Gross Domestic Product), in particular the variation of growth during electoral and non-electoral periods were analyzed. With the results obtained, it was possible to analyze the occurrence of these reliefs and the possible predisposition of political agents in adopting an opportunistic posture with political budget cycles. Also, the profile of the Brazilian electorate and its recent changes in behavior were analyzed, with the intention of identifying a correlation between opportunistic political behaviors and the budgetary political cycles according to the profile of the electorate. The results indicate that, statistically, there are no political budget cycles with opportunistic conduct. However, the data suggest that since 2014, a period coinciding with the change in the profile of the Brazilian voter, the collections in pre-election periods appear to have greater distortions, with increasing trends in the occurrence of opportunistic measures, may be observed a greater decrease in the collection of the last elections.