Tax Without Return: The Brazilian Burden in its True Essence

Hello friends, how are you?

When we are children, we have little or no idea why some things are expensive or simply why our parents don't buy what we want. Even though our parents have always given us and done everything they could to ensure that we never lack anything, since we are still very young, we don't understand much about finances or even why each thing has to be so expensive to get.

As we grow up and of course, when we really become interested in understanding finances, taxes and inflation, everything becomes clearer and more obvious to us. However, there are also people who have no idea what these things are and only know that there are taxes for us to pay so that we can use "public services for free". I'm tired of seeing people on the internet saying that the [SUS (a public health system)() is free. But in reality, I and all Brazilians pay taxes to fund the SUS.

Of course, taxes need to exist, but unfortunately, this type of situation is not how it should be in Brazil. There is a lot of embezzlement, a lot of corruption, and the most impressive thing is that, despite all the scandals that have been uncovered and those that have not yet been uncovered, despite all the crime of this magnitude, Brazil has never reached the point of bankruptcy. Although the country is still "alive", I have never seen the current government bombard us with such a high tax burden.

Brazil, Taxes and Corruption Go Hand in Hand

To give you an idea, Brazil is one of the countries with the highest tax burden in the world. For an average worker, 5 months of their salary is used just to pay taxes. This is absurd, but many people have no idea or, worse, they just put their heads down and go on with their lives trying to survive, because many may complain, but they accept living with this absurdity.

The current government is in its third year in office and, to be quite honest, I have never seen a government with so many taxes created in such a short period of time. There was a time when every week or even every fifteen days, a new tax was created for the people and, as I said before, I know that taxes exist to support basic public services such as health, education and infrastructure, but we Brazilians are already swamped with so much tax burden.

I am not against having taxes, it would be great to be able to know where our money is actually being spent. In the region where I live, compared to where I used to live, it is much better. But public health needs to change and this is at a national level. Recently, my 2-year-old daughter got sick and I had to take her to the doctor. We do not have health insurance and so I had to take her to a public hospital. When it was almost one o'clock, my daughter had not even been called for triage (taking her temperature, weighing her and telling her what she feels and because of that, I ended up going back home.

I took her the other day and I was lucky that on that same day there were few people and there were actually enough professionals to provide care. Now imagine a scenario where a person is almost dying? Just so you know, this year alone, three deaths of people who were waiting in line to be seen were reported. This is the portrait of public health in Brazil. Doctors clocking in and leaving, patients dying without having the chance to be seen... Total disregard.

I have no doubt that if the taxes we pay were really used for all public services in a way that did not involve any risk of corruption, Brazil would be a first world country and I am not exaggerating. The quality of education would improve considerably and because of this, politicians who are currently in power would never be elected again, because people would no longer be so naive as to believe in bread and circuses as they still fall for this type of fallacy today.

Therefore, having taxes is important, but what is even more important is having the responsibility to be able to direct all and any money collected to its proper destination. For this to happen, especially in Brazil, we would need a few generations to be able to change the mentality of the Brazilian people, but who knows, maybe one day this will actually happen. Only time will tell.