LatinNews Daily - 25 November 2025

*Uruguay’s umbrella trade union organisation Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores-Convención Nacional de Trabajadores (PIT-CNT) has publicly presented its proposal to impose a 1% tax on the wealthiest 1% of the country. The union, which has been campaigning for the wealth tax for some months, argues the tax would help finance policies to reduce child poverty. The PIT-CNT presented its proposal at the Universidad de la República (Udelar), a public research university in Montevideo. In its presentation, the union stated that in 2024, the income of 17.3% of people in Uruguay was below the poverty line, rising to 18.9% if multidimensional poverty is considered. It said that in the case of those under six years olds, the poverty rate was 32.2%, meaning that one in three children under six lived in homes with incomes below the poverty line. On the other hand, it said, the top 1% of earners received 15% of the country’s total income, equivalent to the income of the poorest 50%. The PIT-CNT said that “given the social emergency caused by these levels of poverty”, it had developed a proposal for a process involving two stages. The first stage is to create a tax linked to the current personal income tax (IPPF), called the IPPF surcharge, the resources from which would be transferred to a state fund for financing policies to reduce poverty in households with children and adolescents. The second stage encompasses a comprehensive review of the current tax system to develop a greater redistributive capacity. Although the ruling left-wing Frente Amplio coalition (FA) is traditionally an ally of the union and some factions of the FA have backed its calls for the wealth tax, President Yamandú Orsi has been reluctant to impose more taxes.

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