Brazil: world champion in VAT
VAT is the acronym for value-added tax.
With the recent "tax reform", Brazil has consolidated its "leadership" position in terms of the 28% VAT charged. The highest in the world!
This is nothing new. In the electricity sector, too. When we compare ourselves with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), we are also in the "front row" in terms of higher costs in $/kWh.
We urgently need to "wake up". This is not going to work. We would need to do a general clean-up of costs in our public sector.
And the leaders should focus on costs and not on crony projects that have been so common for decades. If things continue as they are now, Brazil will remain an underdeveloped country, with a per capita income that is a (small) fraction of that of developed countries.