Fiscal justice? In Uruguay, the top 20% already pay 75% of the IRPF.

Every so often, like clockwork, the left pulls the same magic proposal out of the drawer: "We need to tax the richest 1% more and that will end poverty."

It sounds wonderful, fits in a tweet, generates applause from the crowd, and fuels resentment against "those who have." The problem is that it runs head-on into Uruguay's real numbers, the ones that never appear in public speeches.

The official data from DGI are forceful and brutal for the traditional narrative:

- The top 10% of earners concentrate about 30% of the country's total income... but pay 50% of all IRPF.

- If we add the next decile (the 9th), together they contribute approximately 75% of direct taxes.

- In other words: the top 20% finance three-quarters of the most progressive tax we have.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of workers in the lowest deciles either do not pay IRPF at all or contribute symbolic amounts.

However, everyone—rich and poor—pays VAT every day. VAT, whether we like it or not, is the most regressive tax in the system because it taxes consumption equally, regardless of income.

But that detail never makes it into the narrative, because it ruins the picture of a "progressive and protector of the humble" State.

So, when someone says "the rich don't pay taxes," that person is either lying or has never looked at a manager's pay slip compared to that of a retail employee.

What would happen if tomorrow we approved the famous "1% tax"?

We already know because we have seen it live and direct elsewhere:

- Argentina: wealth tax → capital and business flight.

- Spain: massive tax hikes on high incomes → exodus of fortunes and professionals to Portugal, Andorra, and even Uruguay.

- France under Hollande: 75% tax on millionaire incomes → thousands of French citizens moved to Belgium and Switzerland in a couple of years.

Here, you would not even need to be a millionaire. It would be enough to have a good salary, a successful small business, or savings abroad to start looking for one-way tickets.

Because no one risks, invests, and creates jobs just to have half plus an extra "solidarity" amount taken away afterward.

Poverty doesn't end by collecting more; it ends by growing more. There is not a single case in recent history where a country has lifted millions out of poverty solely with higher taxes and redistribution.

The examples that did work (South Korea, Singapore, Chile in its best decades, Estonia, Ireland) have something in common: they lowered taxes, simplified regulations, opened their economies, and rewarded those who produce.

In Uruguay, we have already squeezed those who have the most. Continuing to squeeze the same orange yields no more juice; it only ends up breaking the fruit and leaving the tree dry.

The 1% tax is not a policy against poverty. It is a policy to maintain a state apparatus that spends 35% of GDP, has 300,000 public employees, and prefers to invent new taxes rather than cut privileges, eliminate no-show jobs, or be transparent about loss-making public companies.

If we truly want to end poverty, the recipe is not to punish those who generate wealth. It is quite the opposite:

- Lower the effective tax burden.

- Reduce unproductive public spending.

- Open the economy and end the fear of success.

- Stop seeing entrepreneurs as enemies and start seeing them as the only ones who can create genuine jobs.

Because when you punish those who take risks, invest, and produce, the result is always the same: less investment, less employment, less growth... and, at the end of the day, more poverty.

Uruguay doesn't need more taxes. It needs more freedom and less resentment. The day we stop demonizing those who do well, we will all start to do well.