The exemption from Personal Income Tax (IRPF) for those who earn less than R$5,000 and the reduction in the tax for those who receive up to R$7,350, from January 2026, will benefit three out of four basic education teachers ─ early childhood education, primary and secondary education, in public and private networks. The calculation was released this Wednesday (17) by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), which compares that, over the course of a year, the positive impact will be equivalent to receiving a 14th salary.
In absolute terms, more than 600 thousand basic education teachers will no longer pay income tax. Just over half of the category will be exempt from taxation due to Law No. 15,270/2025proposed by the federal government and signed in November by President Luiz Inácio da Lula.
The accounts are part of the study The tax at the tip of the chalk: effects of tax reform on the IRPF of basic education teachers.
“The proportion of teachers exempt from IRPF increases from 19.7% to 51.6% after the reform, while 21.9% now have a reduced tax burden, benefiting around 73.5% of the category”, details Ipea,
The estimate of the impact of Law No. 15,270 was made based on the Annual Social Information List (RAIS), which has a record of all people hired with a formal contract or who work under a statutory regime, and is based on microdata from 2022.
Multiplier effect
According to Adriano Souza Senkevics, planning and research technician at Ipea, the effect is due to the correction of the income tax table “which was very outdated in terms of fiscal progressivity”, which refers to the increase in the tax rate according to income and assets.
Senkevics remembers that Teachers form “one of the largest occupational categories in Brazil”, spread across all municipalities, which will cause a widespread impact on local economies.
“There is, let’s say, the so-called multiplier effect. The more disposable income you have for workers, the more this turns into consumption and more revenue.”
The expert adds that, despite there being the National Teaching Floor (R$4,867.77 for a 40-hour week currently), salary values vary from municipality to municipality and from state to state, depending on the career plan of each education department.
“We will have states in which the percentage of exempt teachers will increase from 20% to 60%”, predicts Senkevics, in the cases of Minas Gerais, Tocantins, Roraima.
Even in the Federal District, where teachers have the best salaries, the proportion exempt from income tax will more than double, from 10 to 25%.
