Luxuries & Sins

Recently (Jan2020), newspapers reported a statement by Minister Paulo Guedes about creating a "Sin Tax."

According to the news reports, the minister referred to cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, sugar (!), and similar products.

He did not mention art, books, sex, or naughty pleasures, but I became concerned. Will condoms now be taxed as a sin or as a luxury item?

He must have coordinated that with Damares, who, by advocating abstinence, turns condoms into both a sin and a luxury at the same time. And people still say the government is disorganized! Everything is perfectly orchestrated!

I remembered a sentence I once saw scribbled on the restroom wall of Álvaro's Restaurant, in Leblon, Rio de Janeiro, in the mid-1970s, when engineer Mário Henrique Simonsen was Minister of Finance and/or Planning, wielded enormous influence, and introduced a tax on "luxury items," which included, among other things, whisky, cigarettes, and pleasure boats. The sentence read:

"Power intoxicates; therefore whisky is a luxury.Signed: M. H. Simonsen."

Since Simonsen was a notorious smoker and a well-known whisky enthusiast (among other things), the joke was brilliant, and the fact that it appeared on a restroom wall made the mockery even greater (government censorship would never have allowed it in the newspapers).

Sins and luxury items may indeed be considered luxuries or sins by those who neither enjoy nor need them. But for those whose livelihood depends on producing these so-called luxury goods (now sinful goods), and for those whose jobs depend on the industries they create, there is nothing amusing about it.

ACCOBAR has long argued, quite rightly, that pleasure boat construction is heavily overtaxed in Brazil because owning a boat has been classified as a luxury, while ignoring the thousands of jobs generated not only in building these boats but also in operating and maintaining them. As with casinos, people end up keeping their boats abroad and literally spending money and creating jobs overseas that could have benefited Brazil. It also distances the middle class from these markets, turning trips to other countries into a permanent collective aspiration.

It is possible that Guedes's proposal will not pass Congress, since sins include lust, pride, gluttony, "thou shalt not steal," and many others. In the end, it would place too heavy a tax burden on members of the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the Executive, and no one deliberately shoots themselves in the foot. Consider this a warning.

And, ironically, presidents regarded as military men (Bolsonaro and Geisel), with ministers regarded as liberals (Simonsen and Guedes).

It will not work—or there is a great deal of falsehood involved. Compatibility between military men and liberals is difficult to believe. Either they are not truly military, or they are not truly liberal.

Rio de Janeiro, published in ENGENHARIA Magazine No. 643, May 2020, p. 86.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler, and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Engineering Institute # written in 2020, 2,538 characters