“The Government Should Have Already Presented This Tax to Congress”
Correio Braziliense reports:
“Sindcerv executive president Márcio Maciel said the lack of clarity is worrying the sector because companies have already begun financial and operational planning for 2027.
“He stated that one of the principles of the tax reform is tax burden neutrality, and argued that the total tax burden should not increase.”
Assessment
Sindcerv’s intervention is a textbook example of how the alcohol industry uses the tax reform process to lock in low rates before the public health evidence can shape the debate. The lobby’s demand for “tax burden neutrality” – that the total tax on beer must not rise under the new system – is the opposite of what an effective health-based alcohol excise tax is designed to achieve.
The beer lobby’s central claim that Brazilian beer is “among the most heavily taxed in Latin America” and that Brazilian beer carries a 56% tax “burden” is built on a methodology that bundles every tax across the entire production chain – energy, transport, packaging, retail – and presents the cumulative figure as the tax in the consumer price.
As Big Alcohol Exposed has documented, the WHO’s standardised measure reveals the beer lobby’s lie: at 2.28%, Brazil’s beer excise tax share is the lowest in the Region of the Americas among countries that actually tax beer. Honduras taxes beer four times more on this measure; Nicaragua nearly ten times. Even IBPT’s own 2026 data places the total tax share on canned beer at 39%, not 56%.
Sindcerv presents itself as the voice of nearly 2,000 breweries, but its board is supplied entirely by Ambev and Heineken Brasil, which together control around 85% of beer production in Brazil. The beer lobby is a coordination platform for two global alcohol giants whose pricing strategies already demonstrate the market’s capacity to absorb significant price increases. But these increases flow currently to shareholders, making the people of Brazil pay for the harm caused by the products of the major beer companies, instead of becoming public revenue where they can be used to pay for the costs of harm and to reduce this burden.
Reports indicate that the Lula government has decided to delay the selective tax rate proposal until after the October 2026 elections, wary of handing the opposition a “more expensive beer” campaign theme. That delay is itself a victory for the alcohol industry lobby, which benefits from every month the current low rates remain in place.
WHO recommends that countries raise real alcohol prices by at least 50% by 2035.
A working paper from the Universidade Católica de Brasília recommends a selective tax on beer of at least 34.3%. The post-election debate is Brazil’s window to set rates at the levels the evidence supports and the people want. But the alcohol industry is working to close it before it opens.