The progressivity of Brazilian personal income tax
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-416147222fcmKeywords:
personal income tax, tax incidence, tax progressivityAbstract
The goal of this work is evaluate the progressivity of Brazilian personal income tax from
2006 to 2012, using index numbers that allows comparisons with other countries. Among
measures of effective or global progression, this paper calculates the Kakwani´s and Suit’s
indexes of departure from proportionality and the Reynolds-Smolensky´s, Musgrave-Thin´s
and Pfähler´s indexes of redistributive capacity. The results show that the Brazilian personal
income tax exhibits high progressivity compared with Latin American and developed countries.
On the other hand, the redistributive capacity of the personal income tax is limited
due to its low revenue compared with national gross income, a problem also faced by
countries with per capita income similar to Brazil’s. The paper also calculates the progressivity
decomposition of personal income tax structure, and finds that the tax-rate effect is
responsible for the entire progressivity while the base effect is proportional.
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