Latin America Advisor

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics: “Brazil already holds the Latin American record for the highest tax burden as a share of GDP: 33 percent. It’s right up there with France and Germany as a poster country for high taxes, but without European efficiency in delivering benefits to the population. Moreover, as a share of public revenue, Brazil already extracts almost twice as much from its corporate sector as the OECD average (20 percent vs. 11 percent). Given this profile, what good will come to Brazil by implementing more anti-business tax laws? Brazil already has a reputation for hostility to corporations in general and multinational corporations in particular. Why put more icing on that cake? Brazilian economic growth is abysmal, around 0.6 percent annually over the past decade, half the mediocre Latin American average (1.3 percent), and a far cry from Chile (2.3 percent). Instead of serving as an errand boy for…”