THE SUBVERSION OF EXTRAFISCALITY IN THE SELECTIVE TAX: AN ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICAL DISPUTES IN THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS OF CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT N°. 132/2023

Abstract

This article investigates the reconfiguration of the Selective Tax's extrafiscal purpose throughout the legislative process of Constitutional Amendment n°. 132/2023, hypothesizing that its extrafiscal bias was suppressed due to political disputes during the deliberation of Proposal n°. 45/2019. Through literature review, documentary analysis, and French-school Discourse Analysis applied to a corpus of 366 parliamentary documents, results indicate that the approved design does not reproduce typical behavior-inducing tax mechanisms, while preserving revenue provisions. Discourse analysis reveals the suppression of the terms "extrafiscality," "negative externalities," and "discourage consumption," resulting from a dispute among Right, Center, and Left subject-positions resolved by the silencing of the extrafiscality institute itself in the promulgated text. The study concludes that the legislative trajectory produced a dissociation between the legitimizing narrative and the constitutional text, highlighting fiscal illusion as an interpretive key to understanding the suppression of extrafiscality in Brazil's Tax Reform.