An internal survey by Instituto Locomotiva – with question framing that mirrors the beer industry’s lobbying messaging – has reached the advisers of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and contributed to the government’s decision to postpone the Selective Tax bill until after the October 2026 elections. The delay risks pushing implementation of the centrepiece of Brazil’s alcohol tax reform from 2027 to 2028, extending the period during which Brazilian beer remains the least excise-taxed in the Americas.
Brazil’s Selective Tax is the health-based excise mechanism set to apply from 2027 to alcoholic beverages and other harmful products under the country’s broader tax reform. According to O Globo‘s Lauro Jardim, the bill – already finalised by the Treasury – will now be sent to Congress only after the October 2026 elections. Government allies concluded that the opposition would exploit “expensive beer” as a campaign theme. Under Brazilian law, a new tax can only be collected in the year after it is approved. If the bill does not pass Congress in 2026, implementation slips from 2027 to 2028.
A survey with no public client – BUT a familiar framing
According to Jardim, an “internal” Instituto Locomotiva survey reaching President Lula’s aides found that 82% of Brazilians agree that “having a barbecue and drinking a beer with friends and family should be accessible to everyone,” and that 74% find this type of activity expensive. Instituto Locomotiva is a commercial polling firm – it produces surveys for paying clients. The new survey is not listed on its public studies page. Whoever paid for it has not been disclosed, and how it ended up in the president’s inner circle at a politically decisive moment – just as the Treasury had finalised the bill – is itself a question worth asking.
Then there is the phrasing. Asking whether having a barbecue and drinking a beer with friends and family “should be accessible to everyone” is designed to produce near-universal agreement, which is then linked to the cost of these activities and, by implication, to taxation.
The framing is not new. A 2024 Instituto Locomotiva survey, also absent from the firm’s public studies page, was publicly promoted by Sindcerv, the beer industry front group whose board is supplied by Ambev (AB InBev) and Heineken Brasil– the two companies that together account for roughly 85% of Brazilian beer production. Sindcerv president Márcio Maciel used the 2024 findings to argue for “tax burden neutrality” – the position that the total tax on beer must not increase under the reform.
The two surveys share a firm, a framing approach, an absence from any public release, and a clear beneficiary if the Selective Tax is delayed or set low. Whether the 2026 study was directly commissioned by Sindcerv or any of its member companies has not been disclosed. What is documented is the pattern.
The lowest beer excise tax in the Americas
The claim that beer is becoming unaffordable for Brazilians does not survive contact with the data. WHO figures show that at 2.28%, the excise tax share on Brazilian beer is the lowest in the Region of the Americas. Brazilian beer is the least excise-taxed beer on the continent. Meanwhile Ambev and Heineken Brasil have been raising beer prices well above general inflation to fund record shareholder distributions. The industry’s pricing power is presented as a threat to Brazilian families when public health is the question, and exercised aggressively when shareholder returns are the question.
The polling is one piece of a coordinated set of tools the alcohol industry has built to shape the reform in its favour. Industry-funded Euromonitor reports are deployed to stoke fears of illicit trade. Public opinion framing is used to position any tax increase as an attack on Brazilian culture. Direct lobbying is targeted at rate caps. And the ABBD – the spirits industry front group representing Bacardi, Beam Suntory, Brown-Forman, Diageo and Pernod Ricard – is buying advertorial space in Poder360 to push its own positioning on rate design, recycling the same Euromonitor illicit trade figures in paid content presented to resemble independent journalism.
Each tactic reinforces the others. With the bill on hold, the industry has more time to shape what the Selective Tax rates eventually look like.
Sources
- Lauro Jardim, “Pesquisa em que brasileiros citam cerveja cara faz governo recuar no Imposto do Pecado,” O Globo, May 2026. Link
- “7 em cada 10 brasileiros consideram impostos sobre cerveja altos, diz pesquisa,” CNN Brasil, 2024. Link
- “Setor de cerveja tem pressa pela definição de carga do Imposto Seletivo,” Correio Braziliense, April 2026. Link