During a speech on Monday (11), in São Paulo, the president of the Senate, Garibaldi Alves, condemned the excessive taxation inflicted on Brazilians and said that this is the moment to take crucial decisions in that area. In his opinion, all indicators are evidencing that Brazil has a stable economy in comparison to other countries.

According to Garibaldi, reducing taxation on investments should be a priority in the country’s agenda. The senator recognized that the government is becoming more sensitive to that issue, but he also observed that reducing taxation is a very complex challenge, because, according to him, "no one is willing to lose anything."

Garibaldi said that tax collection totaled R$ 55.74 billion in June, a growth of 10.54% in comparison to the previous month and of 13.6% if compared with the same month last year.

- The tax burden in Brazil is the third largest in the world. It is even bigger than the ones of countries that, although heavily taxing their citizens, revert good part of the collection to infrastructure and social services, like Canada. In the context of rich nations, there are several with less taxes than Brazil like the United States (25.77%), Japan (26.28%) and Australia (30.68%). Only in Europe there is greater taxation than ours: Sweden (51.35%), Denmark (49.85%), Belgium (46,85%) and France (45,04%).

In the same speech, Garibaldi defended a political reform. In his opinion, a permanent set of rules for national politics will improve the conduct of representatives, creating a strong relation with citizens and overall improving the ethical standards.

- The country is longing for substantive changes in the political system, starting from issues such as voting system, partisan fidelity, the financing of the electoral campaigns, the representation system and also the government system.