Flávio Bolsonaro’s No Tax Pledge Key to Campaign Success 

Presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro signed the Brazilian taxpayer protection pledge, making it the “game changer” of his entire presidential winning campaign.  The taxpayer pledge (modeled on Americans for Tax Reform’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge) is championed by the free market think tank Istituto Livre Mercado (“Free Market Institute”), led by Rodrigo Saraiva Marinho.

On October 4th, Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, won the first presidential round against the socialist incumbent President Lula, respectively 47,03 % to 45.16 %. “Brazil has had enough…this is the end of the era of the Workers’ Party,” declared Flávio Bolsonaro during his first speech after the first round. 

If this victory holds up in the October 25 runoff, Brazil will mark one of the most significant political shifts in recent history, ending more than 20 years of socialism in the region, inaugurated with the victory of Hugo Chavez in 1998. Brazil could be the next country to switch from a leftist populist government to a conservative one, as happened recently in Bolivia with Rodrigo Paz, in Costa Rica with Laura Fernández, in Chile in 2025 with Jose Antonio Kast, in Peru with Keiko Fujimori, and in Colombia with Abelardo de la Espriella

The turning point of the Socialism of the XXI-century started in 2023 with the overwhelming victory of the libertarian candidate Javier Milei as president of Argentina. Milei, after signing the taxpayer protection pledge in 2021, proposed by the Asociación Argentina de Contribuyentes, led by Jonas Torrico, became the most anti-tax crusader candidate in Argentina and helped consolidate his libertarian narrative. Milei signed the pledge on national television and even promised to cut off one of his arms if he ever raised taxes.

Milei’s victory made the taxpayer protection pledge an innovative policy tool that has been proposed, in recent elections, by several free-market Latin American think tanks. For example, in Costa Rica, by IdeasLab led by Dr. Luis Loria; in Peru, by the Asociación de Contribuyentes del Perú led by Jose Beteta; in Chile, by Alianza Chilena de Contribuyentes led by former Ambassador Marcelo Rojas.

“Brazil has spent decades trying to grow by raising taxes”, Rodrigo Saraiva Marinho says, “and the result is that millions of Brazilians work in the informal economy because they have no other option. By signing the taxpayer protection pledge, Flávio Bolsonaro made a public promise, and every tax decision of his government can be held to it. He is not alone: 90 federal deputies and senators have already signed the pledge, and we are just getting started. But this race is not won yet. Flávio Bolsonaro must defeat Lula in the runoff and remove the Workers’ Party and the left from power once and for all. A promise to taxpayers is only worth something if the next government is willing to keep it.”

In a region where the informal economy represents 55% of the workforce, making the tax pledge a “game changer” means that taxation is becoming more and more a vote-moving issue in each of the national elections. In a few months, Flávio Bolsonaro was able to build a free-market and conservative “common sense” program based on budgeting reform by cutting 10 ministries, by capping government spending, by implementing deregulation, tax reform, and a “zero tolerance” on crime by fighting narcoterrorism organizations, adopting El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele’s approach. 

However, besides winning the first round, Flávio Bolsonaro and his Partido Liberal achieved a historic victory in the Senate by holding 28 seats out of 81 and 121 seats out of 513 in the Chamber of Deputies, making it much easier to implement economic reform once president and proceed with potential impeachment against some Brazilian Supreme Court Justices, who have been involved in some corruption scandals.

The Taxpayer Protection Pledge in the United States is a project of Americans for Tax Reform, since 1986. That year, President Reagan urged all Republican candidates to sign the Pledge and praised those who did.