MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil’s richest earning faster

FiscalData's findings contradicted those of the IBGE

A study by the research group FiscalData last week found that Brazil's 0.1% richest people (about 160,000 individuals) increased their earnings fivefold faster than average Brazilians between 2017 and 2023. This group's income rose 6.9% against the 1.4% national average. Hence, they went from holding 9.1% of the country's income in 2017 to 12.5% in 2023, the survey found.

The document was signed by Economists Frederico Nascimento Dutra, Priscila Kaiser Monteiro, and Sérgio Gobetti, who collected information from Brazil’s Revenue Service.

Gobetti is a researcher at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), which is linked to Brazil’s Ministry of Planning and Budget; Kaiser Monteiro is an economist with a degree from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and a master’s degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS); and Nascimento Dutra is an economist and data scientist at Minsait.

By dividing taxpayers into strata, the study classifies the richest 0.1% as those who have a monthly income of R$146,100 (US$26,897) or more. These 160,000, however, have an average monthly income of R$516,000 (US$94,995).

Economists were also able to calculate the concentration of income in an even smaller group – the 16,000 people who correspond to the richest 0.01% in Brazil. In 2017, they held 4.3% of the national income, which went up to 6.2% in 2023. The average income of this group is R$2.57 million (US$473,137) per month.

The study also looks at a broader but still quite small group – the richest 1%, the 1.6 million people making at least R$34,700 (US$6,388.27) a month. They also saw their share of national income surge from 20.4 to 24.3% from 2017 to 2023. This group has an average income of R$103,800 (US$19,109.58) per month.

While the income of the richest 1% grew 4.4% per year from 2017 to 2023, the Brazilian economy expanded 1.8% per year, and the income of Brazilian families as a whole grew 1.4% annually. (All variations are real, already discounted for inflation during the period – 49.7%.)

Hence, the experts concluded that Brazil became more unequal from 2017 to 2023. The study cited dividends and interest on equity capital as the drivers behind this enrichment. Both are ways in which a company shares part of its profits with shareholders. In the richest 1% group, 87.1% of the increase in share stemmed from these types of income. In the richest 0.1-% group, 66% came from these sources. The economists drew attention to the fact that this concentration occurred at a time of low economic growth.

“One hypothesis we have put forward is that high domestic inflation, coupled with rising international prices for some commodities (raw materials such as those used in agribusiness), may have boosted the profits of large entrepreneurs and exporters, even though production volumes remained modest, as did the total wage bill,” they wrote.

The article published by FiscalData contradicts the findings of Brazil’s IBGE, which shows that, in 2023, the difference between the highest and lowest incomes was the smallest since 2012.

The explanation, according to the authors of the study, lies in the fact that IBGE takes into account data from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (known as PNAD Contínua), which is based on self-declaration by the respondents visited.

“As suspected, household surveys tend to underestimate income, especially at the top of the distribution, either by omission or because respondents are unaware of the magnitude of their earnings when multiple sources of income are considered,” the specialists noted.

“It is natural for people to know the exact amount of their salary, but they often do not accurately calculate their extra income from financial investments, dividends, or capital gains in their minds,” they added.

For comparative purposes, regarding the richest 0.01%, the study indicated that their average income exceeds R$2.5 million (US$460,250), while PNAD estimates just over R$200,000 (US$36,820), the researchers said.

In the economists’ view, “any conclusion about income inequality that uses only PNAD data runs a serious risk of misdiagnosis.” The appropriate way to adequately gauge income inequality in Brazil, they argue, is to combine PNAD and Revenue Service data.

At the end of their article, Dutra, Monteiro, and Gobetti acknowledge that income transfer policies, such as welfare programs, “have played a vital role in reducing poverty and mitigating inequality at the bottom of the social pyramid over the last three decades.” However, they say, they are “absolutely insufficient and inadequate” in addressing the current issues at the root of increased concentration.

They believe that the problem must be tackled through a more active tax policy – revising special treatments such as the non-taxation of dividends.

“The good news is that an income tax reform that addresses this challenge could be beneficial – not only from a distribution standpoint, but also from an economic efficiency standpoint, insofar as many of the loopholes and distortions that currently benefit those at the top of the Brazilian social pyramid also appear to be detrimental to competitiveness and economic development,” the article concludes saying.

The study is being published at a time when income tax reform is one of the priorities in Congress for the second half of the year.

The Lower House is currently examining Bill 1,087/2025, drafted by the government, which establishes an exemption from personal income tax for those earning up to R$5,000 (US$920.5) per month and a partial reduction in tax for those earning up to R$7,000 (US$1,288.7).

On the other hand, to compensate for the loss of revenue from the exemption, the bill stipulates the collection of an extra progressive rate of up to 10% for those who earn more than R$600,000 (US$110,460) per year, or R$50,000 (US$9,205) per month. The maximum extra rate of 10% will be charged to people earning R$1.2 million (US$220,920) per year or more.

Gobetti believes that a policy taxing dividends paid to company shareholders would not cause companies to pass on the cost to consumers.

“The rationale for passing on costs to prices may apply if we were talking about taxing corporate profits. But what’s under discussion is taxing dividends distributed to shareholders,” he told Agência Brasil.

In small businesses, owners often manage their businesses and derive their income from the profits earned. In this case, Gobetti believes that “it is true that these two things are often confused – the company’s profit and the owner’s earnings – but you need to look at it from two angles. First, these small businesses already enjoy significantly lower taxation than large ones. Second, Brazilian companies in general have already adjusted their prices to a large degree in recent years, which is the driver behind the increase in profits in Brazil.”

A third point, he adds, is that there does not seem to be “much room or justification” for small companies to adjust their prices yet again, “especially since this could reduce their consumer base compared to larger companies.” (Source: Agencia Brasil)