Empresas comerciais de grande porte e o impacto do ICMS substituição tributária no segmento “ferramentas”: análise dos custos de transação

Abstract

The transaction cost study supported by large commercial companies as a result of the ICMS progressive tax substitution system is pretty incipient in Brazil, especially in a very specific segment such as “tools”. There is a big lack of law analysis combined with tax, accounting and economic contents applied to practice, where the effects of this system adoption can be mathematically shown in a way that an evaluation of these companies’ operations and results may be observed. This paper aims at filling a part of this gap providing subsidies for further knowledge. Both tax and compliance costs regarding the progressive tax substitution system taxation and tax obligations are analysed, going mostly through problems resulting from complex tax connections between the ICMS and other federal taxes. Tax scenarios with deeper calculous of some common operations on the part of the companies are examined in order to have their reflexions evaluated. In the end, it is concluded that such system is not neutral, which causes distortions on the costs and prices, creates loss to competitiveness and entails heavy transaction costs for the commercial companies.