Acceso usuarios
Cristian Altavilla, Márcia Miranda Soares
El trabajo analiza en clave comparada el federalismo fiscal en Argentina y en Brasil desde la perspectiva de disminución de la desigualdad social. El artículo realiza una revisión de la literatura especializada y efectúa un análisis sobre la legislación y los datos fiscales para investigar cómo se estructura la tributación, las transferencias interguber- namentales, los gastos sociales y el endeudamiento público. La conclusión es que los dos países presentan un alto grado de centralización fiscal, lo que propiciaría al gobierno central minimizar las desigualdades sociales. Pero también presentan problemas en el desempeño de la función redistributiva: regresividad de los tributos, baja capacidad de ecualización de las transferencias intergubernamentales, alta inestabilidad económica y endeudamiento público. Se puede observar que el federalismo fiscal brasilero ha logrado ciertos avances en el direccionamiento de los recursos para las políticas sociales y en el control del endeudamiento público, mientras el federalismo argentino aún no ha logrado avanzar en esta dirección.
This work analysis in comparative perspective fiscal federalism in Argentina and Brazil from the perspective of social inequality. In doing so, the article reviews the specialized literature and analyses legislation and fiscal data in order to investigate about the taxation structure, intergovernmental transfer systems, the social expenditure and public debt.
A central aspect of the variability of federalism is the fiscal dimension, which has important effects on social inequalities. The way in which taxation, intergovernmental fiscal transfers, social expenditures and public indebtedness are structured is crucial in defining subnational autonomy and intergovernmental relations. Social inequalities are sensitive to this aspect, since the financing of universal social policies depends on the way in which public resources are collected, distributed and invested by levels of government.
This paper shares the perspective of the variability of federalism and, therefore, of its effects between countries, placing itself in the field of fiscal federalism. Its objective is to present and compare the effects of taxation, transfers, social expenditures and public indebtedness in reducing the marked social inequalities present in the two countries that are the object of this research: Argentina and Brazil. The hypothesis is that federal experiences favor universal and fair social policies when taxation is progressive and the central government concentrates power to define social expenditures, acting inductively and redistributively to promote greater territorial and social equity among the citizens. In other words, fiscal centralization, understood here as the central government’s power to regulate and spend, is a condition for promoting more egalitarian social policies throug- hout the national territory.
