Transparência (e opacidade) da renúncia de receita tributária: desvelando o cenário encontrado nos portais da transparência dos municípios do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

This Master's dissertation aims at understanding the extent to which the legal-administrative model of the Brazilian Fiscal Responsibility Law, provided for transparency in the provision of tax benefits that entails tax expenditure, is a condition of possibility for the right to good public administration in the municipal scope. Using a bibliographic-documentary procedure, in a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach, it has as its starting point the historical unveiling of the tradition of tax benefits and tax expenditure institutes to the construction of a horizon of sense that is constitutionally adequate and that emphasizes the need to control its concession beyond the fiscal limits. It also clarifies that the responsible fiscal management is a state’s constitutional duty to the good administration and that it acts in the legitimation of tax expenditure. Based on these assumptions as well as on the notion of cyber transparency, an empirical research was conducted by consulting the Transparency Portals of the ten Municipalities with the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Brazilian State of Rio Grande do Sul in 2014 to verify its demonstration. It notes the absence of the availability of any statement on its realization (or not) by these municipalities and concludes by its opacity, contrary to the model established by Brazil’s Constitution of Republic of 1988, Fiscal Responsibility Law and Access to Information Law. Consequently, the hypotheses envisaged as solving the proposed problem were not realized when empirically verified. Aiming the exercise of good public administration, it suggests a list of data that can be disseminated by the state in its Transparency Portals, in a universal and understandable way, in order to reverse the scenario found in these Portals and to enhance public information online, making the social and institutional control of tax expenditure happen according to the constitutional purpose.