Latin America's Plans to Tax the Rich

[Judi Lynn]

BY BRENDAN O’BOYLE | MAY 7, 2020
Across the region, progressive tax reforms are gaining traction thanks to the pandemic.

In Latin America’s nascent debate over how to pay for its pandemic response, one idea is gaining traction: Tax the rich.

Since March, debates over new tax measures targeting the ultra-wealthy and high earners have begun in at least nine countries across the region, as lawmakers and governments try to figure out how to fill the massive fiscal holes created by the coronavirus.

“We’ve taken on a massive debt to face this crisis, and we’re going to have to pay for that somehow,” Samuel Pérez Álvarez, a Guatemalan congressman, told AQ. “It’s not going to be the middle or lower classes.”

Pérez and his colleagues from the Semilla party presented a bill in Congress this month to increase the income tax rate on the top 0.1% of earners in response to the crisis. As the pandemic squeezes governments of cash, plans for redistributing wealth have sprung up elsewhere, including in Argentina, Peru and Brazil – and not for the first time.

More:
https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/latin-americas-plans-to-tax-the-rich/