Esforço fiscal em Portugal: uma avaliação no período 1995-2015

Abstract

The tax level in a country has an impact in both the economic and the social spheres and can be assessed using the concepts of tax revenue, tax burden and tax effort. The tax effort is expressed by an index relating the tax burden (ratio between the tax revenue and GDP) with one of three alternative measures: GDP per capita, benchmark tax burden and tax capacity. Using data for the 1995-2015 period and the 28 European Union Member States, we estimate tax effort indexes on the basis of different methodologies. For three of the four computed indices, the results suggest that the tax effort in Portugal followed a downward trend between 1996 and 2010 and an upward one in the period of the implementation of the 2011-2014 economic and financial adjustment program, without, however, having reached the figures observed in 1996. For the fourth index, the results point towards a trend of increase in the tax effort in Portugal since 1996. The empirical evidence also suggests that the tax effort in Portugal has remained below the EU Member States average.