Law 15.270, enacted at the end of November, has placed a new component on the radar of investors, entrepreneurs, and self-employed professionals: a combination of monthly withholding on dividends and an annual adjustment to guarantee a minimum effective tax of 10% for those in the high-income brackets starting in 2026.

Under this mechanism, all dividend payments from the same company exceeding R$ 50,000 per month are subject to a 10% withholding tax. For example, someone receiving R$ 55,000 in dividends will have R$ 5,500 withheld. For non-residents, however, there is no minimum withholding tax: any distribution abroad is subject to the 10% tax rate.

The paying company now has an additional obligation to withhold and collect the funds. And the beneficiary may face prolonged unavailability of the funds, since the withholding is an advance payment and any eventual refund depends on the annual tax return.

“It’s a very cheap loan that will be granted by taxpayers to the public administration,” says Hermano Barbosa, tax law partner at BMA Advogados, on Wealth Point, a NeoFeed program.

And the minimum tax, calculated annually, applies to all forms of income, not just dividends, such as rental income from real estate, progressively starting at R$ 600,000 per year, reaching the full rate of 10% when annual income reaches the equivalent of R$ 1.2 million.

Tax-exempt securities (such as incentivized debentures , LCI/LCA) and REITs and Fiagros with more than 100 shareholders were excluded from the calculation.

This changes the logic of how an investment portfolio is structured. Experts explain that tax-exempt income, which is excluded from the calculation base, does not help to increase the effective tax rate for that taxpayer.

Thus, an investor with a high dividend income and the remainder of their assets concentrated in tax-exempt investments may find that withholding tax effectively becomes a "definitive" tax, with less chance of a refund.

“The investor’s concern now should be: ‘What can I do to increase my chances of getting a refund of this withholding?’ And then we’ll see what investment possibilities exist,” says Roberto Freitas, head of wealth planning at G5 Partners.

For this profile, the discussion indicated that it makes sense to simulate the rule based on the last declaration and, from there, study alternatives — including evaluating the presence of taxable income that helps to "pull" the effective tax rate upwards, without losing sight of the final net amount.

The fact is that now, these business families and self-employed professionals will have to rethink and calculate on a case-by-case basis to see what is most efficient in optimizing income from 2026 onwards.