Blockchain fiscal: uma proposta para as administrações tributárias

Abstract

The digitization of taxes and its underlying processes is growing worldwide, including developing countries. In this sense, electronic tax documents represented an important advance in the process of digital transformation of tax administrations in Brazil. However, the current operating system still presents several challenges to be overcome. In the technological aspect, one can cite the typical vulnerabilities and inconsistencies of a centralized model. In addition, from a functional perspective, the lack of control over the payment of taxes considered in tax documents is highlighted. In this context, Blockchain technology emerges as a possibility to complement the current model, thanks to its characteristics, such as traceability, immutability, security and transparency, which are essential in the fiscal environment. For tax administrations, potential benefits of this integration include higher revenue levels and reduced tax evasion and fraud. Taxpayers can mainly benefit from reduced compliance costs, thanks to the implementation of more efficient tax processes. Another important ally in the design of a more efficient tax model is the central bank digital currencies (CBDC), which, together with cryptocurrencies, have been leading a new phase in the historical process of dematerialization and digitization of money. Permissionless cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have impacted the primarily financial system as a speculative trading instrument. On the other hand, central bank digital currencies have the potential to revolutionize the payment system, as their characteristics can guarantee the necessary stability for a retail currency, used in everyday transactions. In this context, tax administrations will be affected both in political and operational aspects and will have the challenge of defining tax processes that take advantage of CBDCs for the payment of taxes and, at the same time, bring innovations and improve current systems, exploring the possibilities of a Blockchain environment. This dissertation proposes five application models based on Blockchain, aimed at monitoring the payment of taxes. The models contemplate different types of integration with the systems responsible for authorizing tax documents, which currently exist, and consider integration with a future CBDC system. Additionally, smart contracts referring to one of the presented models were implemented and tests were carried out for a simplified application scenario, in order to validate the most relevant ideas and concepts of the model