Ilusão fiscal

A fundamental contribution was made by an Italian scholar, Amilcare Puviani, who published his major works at the turn of this century. [...] Puviani's approach to public finance is based on an assumption that the State is "monopolistic." [...] the State represents an agency through which one group of persons, those possessed with power, exerts its will upon persons in another group, those who are dominated. This is essentially a force theory of politics, a "ruling-class" model. As such, it is akin to the Marxian conception, although it is not specifically Marxian in content.

One means of explaining the behavior of the ruling class is that of placing one's self, conjecturally, in their position and asking: What actions should be taken if the objective is that of minimizing resistance or discontent on the part of the dominated groups? This approach is in the tradition of Machiavelli's Il Principe, an approach that has been widely employed (and widely misunderstood). Puviani approached the theory of fiscal organization with the question: If the ruling group desires to minimize taxpayer resistance for any given level of revenues collected, how will it set out to organize the fiscal system?

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1. The connection between the total amount of resources actually utilized in producing or supplying public services and any individualized share in this total may be obscured to the taxpayer. In other words, the individual shares in the opportunity cost of public spending may be hidden. Illusions of this sort can be generated in at least five separate institutions of taxation.

The first involves the use of income from the public domain to finance government operations. [...] The second institution [...] is [...] when the tax is actually absorbed in the payment that an individual makes for private goods and services. [...] The public debt is the third institution [...] A fourth [...] is that which involves the financing of public goods and services through inflation, that is, through currency creation. [...] A final means [...] is the making of false promises.

2. [...] A second category includes those institutions of payment that are designed so as to tie the obligation to a time period or an event which the taxpayer seems likely to consider "favorable." [...]

3. A third means of introducing a fiscal illusion, and one that is closely related to the one previously discussed, is found in the charging of explicit fees for nominal services rendered upon the occasion of memorable or pleasurable events. [...]

4. [...] If a particular attitude is pervasive in the community, an opportunity is provided to levy a tax that will capitalize on such sentiment, making the burden appear less than might otherwise be the case. [...]

5. [...] the governing class will, in order to secure the general acceptance of a tax, threaten the body politic with the direst of consequences if, in fact, the tax levy is not approved. [...] "scare tactics" [...]

6. To the extent that the total tax load on an individual can be fragmented so that he confronts numerous small levies rather than a few significant ones, illusory effects may be created. [...] fiscal systems in monopolistic states tend to be complex and to rely relatively little on general, broad-based taxes.

7. A final, and important, means of creating illusion on the tax side lies in the levy of taxes under situations where the individual cannot really know who finally pays; that is, in situations where the incidence of the tax is unknown. [...]

James M. Buchanan, Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice, The Fiscal Illusion