Extra-fiscal Progressivity of the Property, Land and Urban Taxation as an Instrument of Urban Policy Effectiveness

Abstract

This study has the scope to address the extrafiscal nature of the Territorial and Urban Land Property Tax (IPTU), more precisely its extrafiscal progressiveness and the function of this progressiveness on the urbanistic policies outlined in the Constitution. Within a social and urban context, the IPTU will be analized as a tax instrument of effectuating urban policies, applied with increasing rates gradually in time in order to combat the urban land speculation, as well as to induce the urban property owner to adopt a socially desired behavior, namely to adequatly use their property. Thus, the methodology literature was used, from which were extracted the necessary information for the development of this work. Based on such scientific and doctrinal information, this approach will contain historical aspects about the Territorial and Urban Land Property Tax, the Property and the urban policy in Brazil. Furthermore, it will address the social function of property, considering that this urban law principle guides the legal texts dealing with the progressivity of the property tax, whether the provision be constitutional, the City Statute or the Land-use Plan. Finally, we will show how the mentioned city tax, assuming an extrafiscal character, acts in the achievement of social and urban purposes pursued by the Social and Democratic State stamped the Federal Constitution of 1988 being used as a means of municipal intervention in private property. It was concluded, in the end, that the property tax when is of extrafiscal progressiveness, assumes the burden of helping the municipal administration in the implementation of urban policies, in order to induce certain portion of the population to adopt a consistent behavior with such policies, which intent to improve the natural and artificial environment of the municipalities, as well as seek the welfare of its inhabitants.