Brazil tax collection breaks record in October

The federal tax revenue reached $43.37 billion in October, the highest result for the month ever registered by the Federal Revenue of Brazil. This was the highest result since January 2014, when $44.69 billion was collected, according to data released today (Nov. 25) by the Federal Revenue Secretariat.

The result for October was influenced by the repatriation of undeclared assets held abroad, due to the law known as the Asset Repatriation Law. In order to regularize the assets, the taxpayer had to pay 15% of income tax and 15% of fines, totaling 30% of the regularized amount.

In comparison with October 2015, a real increase of 33.15% was reported. The collection of regularized assets reached $13.14 billion.

The year-to-date collection continue dropping. From January to October, it reached $308.94 billion, a real decrease of 3.47% compared with the same period of 2015.

Recession

The head of the Federal Revenue's Tax and Customs Administration, Claudemir Rodrigues Malaquias, explained that the drop in collection was caused by the economic recession.

"Federal revenue is always strongly affected by the economic scenario. We are still in a scenario in which all the macroeconomic indicators are unfavorable, negative. We have a very low employment rate, the worker's income is decreasing, the purchasing power is greatly affected, and, thus, we have a lower industry production, and it creates a direct impact on the federal tax revenue," he said.

Translated by Amarílis Anchieta