Direito monetário e seus reflexos no direito tributário: a circulação da moeda como fato jurídico-tributário

Abstract

Money plays a very important assignment in society. Specially, the monetary resource represents the universal way of exchange in modern social groups. Money is the instrument that provides the trade of goods and services in a certain community. Life in society without the existence of money would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. In addition to its roll as a general instrument of exchange, monetary resources also work as value reserve, as general standard of value exchange and as payment instrument. The combination of such attributes makes money a social institution accepted by all elements of a certain social group, and a prestigious legal institution. In other words, money as economic reality turns into legal reality due to the prescriptive prepositions that comprise Law. For didactic purposes, the autonomous scientific study of money is insert in the field of Monetary Law. As legal reality, money causes consequences in all branches of Law, as Law corresponds to a system organized by principles that input identity and harmony to it. As a sub-system of a major system (Law), Tax Law also undergoes impact from the rules that constitute Monetary Law. Various are the effects of latter in the former. The roles performed by money in a social group require the tax legislator to be attentive to its effects and, therefore, legislate its consequences, if necessary. Thus, many Tax Law rules employ Monetary Law and Monetary Economy concepts, and therefore the effects produced by this employment generates tax consequences. Among such tax rules, the present study intents to study the currency circulation as a legal tax fact before the principles which rule taxation in Brazil