  The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increasing interest in
Universal Basic Income (UBI) proposals as it exposed the inadequacy of
traditional welfare systems to provide basic financial security to a large
share of the population. In this paper, we use a static tax-benefit
microsimulation model to analyse the fiscal and distributional effects of the
hypothetical implementation in Brazil of alternative UBI schemes which
partially replace the existing tax-transfer system. The results indicate that
the introduction of a UBI/Flat Tax system in the country could be both
extremely effective in reducing poverty and inequality and economically viable.
