TYPOLOGICAL OR CONCEPTUAL APPROACH TO TAX POWER ALLOCATION RULES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN BRAZIL AND GERMANY

Abstract

The article analyzes the constitutional tax systems of Brazil and Germany regarding the tax power allocation rules and their typological or conceptual approach using the functionalist comparative method. In Germany, the typological approach was accepted by the Constitutional Court as a mechanism for granting the legislator with the freedom to format taxes, enabling him to com-bine and modify characteristics within a typical model, as a counterpart to the absence of a power to invent new taxes that would lead the risk of petrification of the Constitution. The comparison with the Brazilian system leads to an opposite conclusion, since the 1988 Constitution explicitly established the power to invent new taxes by the residual and extraordinary competence of the Federal Union, choosing two rigid and necessary characteristics (taxable event and tax base) as a parameter to identify a new tax, which characterizes the adequacy of the conceptual method.