Because of the inequality levels in the country and because it is off the radar of the National Taxes and Customs Authority (Dian) There is always an indefinite number of business owners and companies that companies use to pay for their expenses.You don’t need to be a member of a social club or summer house to be considered upper class in Colombia, another addition difficult to quantify, the majority of which are high-income independent professionals paid in cash.
As both Dian’s new director, Luis Carlos Reyes, and Finance Minister José Antonio Ocampo have made clear, one of the main pillars of tax reform that Gustavo Petro’s government will present to Congress is: The group that earns more than 10 million pesos per month will start paying more income tax from 2023. This is to seek new financial resources.
You can read: How much money do construction workers earn in Colombia?
To do this, the mechanism planned to be used, as Reyes explained to Yamid Amat at EL TIEMPO last Sunday, is to limit the value of the exempt income of any taxpayer who receives more than 10 million pesos per month to 4 million pesos. . requiring top earners to pay more tax on a portion of their income that wasn’t previously calculated during the income statement.
But without ignoring Dane’s classifications based on available data, the thousands of people who receive those 10 million pesos or similar and are labeled upper class are far from wealthy and practically middle class because they are in that range. classify those with per capita income between 690,524 pesos and 3.71 million pesos per month at home.
For example, if a salaried or independent worker earns 10 million pesos but has two children and his spouse is not working, what you earn is divided by four, so per capita income is 2.5 millionwhich places it in the middle class.
It’s different from those who earn the same amount of money and are single or living with one and having no children, which shows that the household’s per capita income is 5 million pesos per month and that even if they earn, they are upper class. same as the first.
However, despite the large number of variables that affect the spending and luxuries that a family earning more than 10 million pesos can afford, Reyes insists anyway: They are part of the top 1 percent of the income distribution in Colombia.
Data from the Integrated Contribution Reconciliation Form (Pila) is only 0.94 in April. percentage of employed persons, a total of 188,651 dependent and independent workersContributed over 10 million pesos to the Social Protection System.
For its part, the Danish figures for 2021 represent 1.4 percent of 20.4 million workers (excluding unaccounted employed ones), ie 143,715 people more than 9 minimum wages per month (each minimum wage is 1 million pesos in 2022), 0.64 percent, 64,916 peoplecorresponded to independent persons earning more than this total.
Read more: Netflix will charge extra for shared accounts in 5 South American countries
And if classification by social class (which is done by dividing a household’s total income by the number of people who make up it), is in the middle class range (from 690.524 pesos to 3.7 million pesos). pesos) There were 4.9 million wage earners and 2.78 million self-employedA group that includes a few workers with 10 million pesos but heads of households with children.
Keeping the same parameter, a person is considered upper class when he has income. each member of a household exceeds 3.71 million pesos. And there are 397,973 employees and 196,341 self-employed here.
For an upper-class household in Colombia, the cost of owning one’s own home is 16.1 percent of monthly expenditure, according to Dane. This middle-class expense is also the one that demands the most resources from their monthly income. but at 14.5 percent.
But in the vulnerable, own housing expenditures represent 12.6 percent, according to the Dane survey, which measures household spending and how they are distributed, and is used for revisions of the family basket by which it is measured.
On the other hand, food and beverages to be prepared and consumed at home occupy 8.2 percent of the budget of a first-class household; 15.8 percent in the middle class; 22.2 percent among the vulnerable and almost a quarter of their income among the poor (23.8 percent).
Likewise, in the upper class, the private car is the fourth largest expense (mostly paid on credit) and weighs 4.6 percent in its basket, while in the middle class, the vehicle drops to position 8 with a weight of 2.4 percent.
For Danes, the average income earned by an upper-class person from work is 6.46 million pesos per month in 2021: 4 times more than a middle-class person gets. For that year, 595,985 people from the upper class were listed as unpaid family workers and employees in other household-owned companies or businesses, a category that includes unpaid employees.
If we discount these last two groups, we get the upper-class wage earners. only 4 percent of the total 10.2 million people Less than 2 percent of the 10.14 million independents with dependents or employment contracts were classified as upper class by Danes.
In addition, from the pandemic year 2020 to 2021, the number of wage earners who regained their income and returned to the upper class was 39,232, while the self-employed increased by 23,718, but in both cases the level remains below the level observed in 2019.
Parmalat responds to SIC investigation for whey
Netflix will charge extra for shared accounts in 5 South American countries
ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
Source: Exame
