Mexico’s parties and taxes: wealth, soda taxes and public debt

If there is one matter the Chamber of Deputies decides on its own, it is public spending. The Constitution gives it the sole power to approve the Federal Budget, which it must pass by 15 November each year; the Revenue Law and any tax bill also go through the Senate, but they must be debated in the Chamber first (Constitution, Articles 72 and 74). The 500 deputies elected on 6 June 2027 will approve the budgets for 2028, 2029 and 2030.

This analysis reviews how each group voted on the 2026 and 2027 fiscal packages and the stance each party takes on the six statements of the test topic “Economy and taxes”: three that count toward your result and three more that only come up in the tie-break. An asterisk (*) next to a position means we found no statement by the party on that exact point, so we infer it from what it does say on related issues; 14 of the 48 positions in this topic work that way. SOMOS and Partido PAZ, registered in 2026, have no deputies yet: what is said about them here is drawn from their founding documents and remains provisional until they file their platforms in January 2027.

How the fiscal packages were voted

These are the votes in general as recorded in the Parliamentary Gazette. The totals also count one deputy with no group, who voted in favor every time except on the budget, a vote that deputy did not take part in; on the IEPS there was also one abstention from Movimiento Ciudadano. The 2027 budget has not been voted on yet.

The map is the same in all five: the Morena, PVEM and PT benches pass them without a single vote against, and the PAN and PRI benches reject them without a single vote in favor. Movimiento Ciudadano is the only one with nuances. In November 2024 it backed the 2025 Revenue Law (26 to 0), although it then opposed that year’s budget. It voted against the whole 2026 package and against what has been voted so far of the 2027 one, except for two of its deputies, who in October 2026 supported the Revenue Law and the income tax amendment.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the 2027 package raises revenue “without creating new taxes or increasing the general rates”: the income tax changes, it says, aim to improve enforcement and close room for avoidance (General Economic Policy Criteria 2027, p. 5).

Sodas, junk food and tobacco

The special tax on production and services (IEPS) applies to specific products, such as alcohol, tobacco, fuels and sugary drinks. Its reform for 2026, published on 7 November 2025, nearly doubled the fee on drinks with added sugars, from 1.6451 to 3.0818 pesos per liter, and for the first time taxed those sweetened with non-sugar sweeteners, at 1.50 pesos. It raised the rate on cigarettes from 160% to 200%, and their fixed fee per cigarette rises every year until 2030. It also reached other nicotine products, gambling and violent or adult video games (DOF, 7 November 2025; earlier fees in the Center for Public Finance Studies note).

Making these products even more expensive is the statement that most closely follows the voting lines. In the strongly agree spot are Morena, the PVEM and the PT, whose deputies passed the reform with 243, 62 and 45 votes respectively, with none against. For the PT this is nothing new: its leader was already calling for a higher IEPS in 2021.

On the other side, disagreeing, are the three opposition groups that rejected it: the PAN (0 to 69), whose program of action calls for lower rates; the PRI (0 to 35), whose leader argued in 2021 that the IEPS should be cut; and Movimiento Ciudadano (0 to 25), whose leader said the same that year.

Two parties sit in the middle. SOMOS (neutral) wants the IEPS money from sugar, alcohol and tobacco to pay for health coverage for everyone, but is silent on whether the fee should go up. Partido PAZ (neutral*) wants the revenue from special taxes to go to productive projects, without a view on the rate.

Taxing large fortunes

Mexico has no federal wealth tax: the federal government mainly taxes income, through the ISR, and consumption, through VAT and the IEPS. What did change in 2020 is the Constitution, which since then bans forgiving taxes (Article 28).

A yearly levy on the largest estates is the statement in this topic that divides the parties most, and not along bloc lines. The two that strongly agree sit on opposite sides of Congress. The PT, Morena’s ally, proposed in its 2024 platform to tax “property and wealth” more heavily; one of its deputies, José Luis Sánchez González, also introduced a bill in March 2026 that would charge between 1.5% and 3.5% every year on net wealth above 100 million pesos (Parliamentary Gazette, 3 March 2026). Movimiento Ciudadano, in the opposition, wants to pay for a minimum income with “taxes on wealth” and to tax what its platform calls “excessive” accumulation of wealth.

Morena is neutral. At her press conference of 14 April 2026, President Claudia Sheinbaum answered that a special tax on great fortunes is, if anything, something that “must be analyzed” in the country, and argued that ending tax forgiveness already makes those who have most pay more (transcript); her government has not proposed it and the party has no bill of its own.

At the opposite end, strongly disagreeing, is the PAN: its program of action explicitly rejects taxes that penalize saving and building up assets. SOMOS agrees because it proposes a progressive tax reform that weighs more on high incomes, although it does not propose taxing wealth itself.

The other three positions are estimated. Partido PAZ (agrees*) denounces in its declaration of principles the “obscene fortunes of a few” and wants wealth shared out more fairly through “fair taxes.” The PRI (neutral*) wants revenue to move toward the OECD average, while leaving income tax and VAT rates untouched. The PVEM (disagrees*) proposes deductions and tax cuts in its documents, not new levies.

Debt and spending

According to the General Economic Policy Criteria that the Ministry of Finance sent to Congress in September 2026, the broadest measure of public debt, the historical balance of public sector borrowing requirements, closed 2025 at 52.6% of GDP, will end 2026 at around 54.0% and will reach 55.0% in 2027. The ministry puts the 2027 rise down mainly to higher financing costs and a higher exchange rate, and expects the deficit to keep shrinking gradually (General Economic Policy Criteria 2027, pp. 17 and 22).

Should debt come down even at the cost of spending cuts? Of the three scored statements, this is the mildest: no party goes to either end of the scale. Only two agree. The PAN’s 2024 platform calls for gradually lowering federal government borrowing and spending less, with different priorities and more transparency. Movimiento Ciudadano wants to avoid using debt to balance the books and to save through lower federal spending, while also calling for more public investment and social spending, paid for with a tax reform.

The only one that disagrees is the PT: it defends sound finances, but prefers to lower debt by renegotiating it and wants the state to invest and spend more to drive growth. Morena and the PRI are neutral, for almost mirror-image reasons: Morena stresses fiscal discipline while promising to keep and expand social programs; the PRI faults the government for its deficit and debt, while proposing that health spending come close to 4% of GDP. The PVEM, SOMOS and Partido PAZ are neutral*: none of the three proposes bringing debt down in its documents (the PVEM wants its origin investigated, and Partido PAZ wants to issue national bonds). How that spending is shared out is covered in “Mexico’s parties and social programs”.

The three tie-break statements: banks, capital income and inheritances

The next three statements do not add to your result: the test only asks them if, at the end, several parties are almost tied.

Banks. This is the statement with the broadest agreement in the topic: seven of the eight parties disagree with the state taking over the banks. Only the PT agrees: according to its 2024 platform, the state should again run the strategic sectors, “including banking”; in its declaration of principles, it also speaks of gradually winning back the banking and financial sector. None of the others proposes nationalizing banks: the PRI proposes strengthening development banks, and Movimiento Ciudadano, regulating private banks to make credit cheaper. For the PVEM and Partido PAZ, the position is estimated.

Interest and dividends. Taxing capital income more heavily the larger it is splits the parties differently. Strongly agreeing are the PT, which wants higher taxes on capital profits, and Partido PAZ, whose program of action calls precisely for progressive income tax brackets on interest and dividends, its only documented position in the topic. Agreeing are Movimiento Ciudadano, which wants higher rates on top incomes without naming this kind of income, and SOMOS, which proposes a progressive scale for what is earned from financial speculation. Disagreeing are the PAN, the PRI and the PVEM; the latter because in its 2024 legislative agenda it seeks a cut in the tax on profits from selling shares. Morena is neutral*: none of its documents addresses it.

Inheritances. Movimiento Ciudadano is the only one that strongly agrees: its 2025 declaration of principles wants to tax “unproductive inheritances.” The PT, which agrees, speaks of a wealth tax without naming inheritances. At the other end, the PAN (strongly disagrees) rejects in its program taxes on what is passed on to new generations. Morena disagrees: according to El Imparcial (May 2026), cited on its page, the president ruled out opening that debate; this is a press report, not a party or government document. Four positions remain estimated: the PVEM’s, disagrees*, and the neutral* ones of the PRI, SOMOS and Partido PAZ.

The whole topic in one table

What separates the parties

Measured in points on the 1-to-5 scale, the average distance between the eight parties is 1.68 on large fortunes and 1.61 on sodas and tobacco, but only 0.68 on debt (our own arithmetic on the positions in the table). In other words: the parties argue far more about who should pay than about how much the government should borrow.

And who should pay does not line up the same way in the two questions. On taxes on the consumption of harmful products, the dividing line is the one from the votes: the government and its allies on one side, the opposition on the other. On wealth taxes, the line shifts: the PT joins Movimiento Ciudadano, and on that question Morena and the PVEM end up closer to the PRI than to the PT (using the PRI’s and the PVEM’s estimated positions). That is why, across the three test statements, Morena and the PVEM are only a third of a point apart on average, while Morena and the PT are a full point apart; counting the tie-break statements too, the gap between Morena and the PT grows to 1.5 points.

The two parties furthest apart are the PAN and the PT, 3 points apart on average across the three test statements, out of a possible maximum of 4: they do not match on any of them. Movimiento Ciudadano is far from the two big governing parties (2 points from Morena and 2.33 from the PVEM), but for opposite reasons in each question: it wants more tax on wealth and no IEPS increase. SOMOS and Partido PAZ match on all three, although many of those positions are estimated and may change with their platforms.

The analysis on left and right explains how these positions weigh on the economic axis of the compass. The pairwise comparisons go into these and other differences: Morena and the PT, Morena and Movimiento Ciudadano or the PAN and Movimiento Ciudadano. Every source is linked on the party pages. The first three statements are in the test: the ones on fortunes and sodas also appear in the quick version.