Late in the 18TH century, when Brazil was still a Portuguese colony, the natives were restless. So they called on Joaquim da Silva Xavier, a soldier, prospector and sometime dentist (hence his nickname, “Tiradentes”) to lead a tax revolt. Their grievance: one of every five kilos of Brazilian gold went straight to Lisbon’s bottomless royal coffers. The rebels called it “the fifth from hell.”
What would Tiradentes say now? More than one of every three reais Brazilians earn goes to local, state and federal governments, an alphabet soup of levies – ICMS, COFFINS, CPMF, numbering 61 in all. There are taxes on top of taxes, nearly doubling the retail price of a can of beer or a schoolchild’s lunchbox. No wonder the symbol for the Brazilian internalrevenue service is the lion. “ Brazilians work the first five months for the government, then for themselves,” says Ives Gandra Martins, Brazil’s foremost tax expert. “We are taxpayers before we are citizens.”
(taken from NEWSWEEK, March 28, 2005)
According to paragraph 1, at the time of colonialism in Brazil, taxes were