An impact assessment of the seal of fiscal control of waters packaged about ICMS arcade in the State of Ceará

Abstract

The economic segment of water bottling for human consumption has shown a significant increase in the last years in the State of Ceará, leaping from a volume of 86 companies in 2008 to 252 companies in 2017. It is known that the regulation of products, such as water intended for human consumption, has a direct impact on the quality of life of the entire population. Thus, it is necessary for the State to be active in the regulation of this sector, in order to guarantee the sanitary quality of the product, as well as to certify the regularity of all its obligations of the packaging companies. Due to this, the State of Ceará established, in 2015, the mandatory Fiscal Control Seal in the bottles of 20 liters of water marketed in the State. This study seeks to measure the impact of the implementation of this policy on the collection of ICMS paid by water producers. For this, a model of differences in differences associated to the quantile regression method was used. The results point to the lack of a global impact resulting from the creation of the Fiscal Seal on the collection of the State. However, regarding financial impacts on companies, the disaggregated analysis showed that the policy has a significant effect on taxpayers in the first decile of collection, whose collection increased by 3.8%. This indicates that the segment, apparently more affected by the creation of the Fiscal Seal, was that of small packers, indicating an increase in the capillarity of the tax authorities and an improvement in the potential of ICMS collection among these taxpayers.