Comment by jdahlin
18 hours ago
Brazil has the opposite of high taxes, especially for company owners. I remember paying 6% on income, compared to up to 70% in Sweden.
18 hours ago
Brazil has the opposite of high taxes, especially for company owners. I remember paying 6% on income, compared to up to 70% in Sweden.
Import taxes in Brazil are 60%, plus something like 18% on top of the product, shipping and the aforementioned import taxes.
The result is a nearly 100% tax on computers and consumer electronics. One for you, one for the government.
That 6% figure is just the Simples Nacional rate for micro-businesses making less than 35kUSD/year. The actual income tax tops out at 27.5% at middle class thresholds. On top of that Brazil stacks social security tax, payroll taxes and a yet more taxes embedded in every single purchase. If you calculate all of this you can figure out something like up to 70% of a brazilian's income can flow to the government.
You say swedish companies pay 70% taxes. Well, swedish citizens get excellent services and a generally functioning country in return. Brazilian citizens pay 70% taxes and they get... Brazil.
This is very misleading. My salary in Brazil is on the very top end (with most of my income in the 27.5% bracket), and my average effective income tax rate in the last 5 years has been about 16%.
I'm not doing anything creative accounting-wise, I just max out my contributions to retirement accounts (PGBL) and get the correct tax deductions for all medical and education expenses.
We do have high import tariffs for individuals, and especially for consumer goods, as it's been pointed out in a different comment.
This does make it a very expensive country indeed if you want to live your life worshiping consumerism. But if you don't, you'll find that individuals don't really pay that much compared to other countries.