We live in a paradox: the State claims to protect the poorest, but it is precisely the poorest who suffer the most from its protection. The more it promises care, the more it demands control. The more it talks about social justice, the more it imposes bureaucracy, taxation and dependency. And all of this comes disguised as institutional benevolence.
Modern tax oppression no longer wears uniforms — it uses bills, apps and regulations. Small business owners, self-employed workers, microentrepreneurs: all are forced to navigate an ocean of taxes, declarations, registrations, authentications and codes. And when they can't keep up, they become defaulters, tax evaders or “invisible”.
The weight of the State does not fall with the same force on everyone. Large conglomerates have legal and accounting departments capable of exploiting loopholes and “incentives”. The average citizen, on the other hand, bears the burden of the complexity of the most hostile tax system on the planet. Brazil does not collect taxes to redistribute: it collects taxes to maintain its own insatiable machine.
And how is this justified? With the old protection speech.
The government says it needs more resources to provide health, education and security. But the more it collects, the more inefficient it becomes. The problem is not a lack of revenue — it is excessive ambition. The public sector grows, the civil service grows, political benefits grow… and the citizenry shrinks.
It is a perverse inversion of values: the State should serve the individual, but it demands that the individual sacrifice himself for it. There is no freedom where everything is authorized, taxed, monitored. And there is no justice where punishment falls heavily on those who produce, while those who consume excessive public resources remain shielded.
The rhetoric of protection has become a smokescreen. Behind it lies the real project: to keep the population dependent, uninformed and too busy to resist. An exhausted people do not protest — they just survive.
It's time to say the obvious with courage: the State does not protect — it suffocates.
And the greatest form of institutional violence is that which hides under the name of “tax justice”.
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