The politics of taxation in Argentina and Brazil in the last twenty years of the 20th century

This dissertation undertakes a detailed comparative qualitative analysis of taxation's behavior during the 1980s and 1990s in Argentina and Brazil. I argue that due to a reduction of veto players during the late 1980s, change took place in both cases, but to different extent and nature. The reason for their divergences, I argue, is the different nature of the respective veto players' reductions and the prevailing interests after these temporary reductions.;The result of the analysis is that Argentina and Brazil decreased the progressive capacity of their taxation. This was so because they increased their total taxing capacity without improvements (even worsening) of their distributive justice taxing qualities, since their increased taxing capacities were based on an increased reliance on taxes with less insurmountable solutions for collective action dilemmas (indirect or consumption taxes). Furthermore, Argentina and Brazil decreased the progressive relevance of their taxation because they decreased (or maintained) their central governments' relevance based on a relative increase of the ratio of consumption to income taxation.;In terms of cross-sectional comparisons, Brazil had a less progressive taxation level than Argentina throughout these two decades. Brazil had a greater taxing capacity than Argentina based on worse distributive justice qualities, since the relative distance between income and consumption taxation was greater in Brazil and toward the consumption side. There was no significant identifiable difference in progressive taxation relevance between Argentina and Brazil but Brazil has consistently given more relevance to income and consumption taxation than Argentina when analyzed them individually.;An important question of interest that remains open is what explains differences in absolute values of taxation outcomes. This question was relevant throughout the analysis presented, but not addressed since further research was needed. I propose ways of how to undertake such research with respect to Argentina and Brazil.;In addition, I propose a quantitative cross-sectional time series analysis to extrapolate and generalize the undertaken Argentine and Brazilian taxation analysis. It is a statistical analysis, which would be essential for properly testing hypotheses of change, direction, and magnitude of the dependent variables: tax policy centralization, progressivity, and level. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).