It is widely known that Brazil has one of the most unequal income distributions in the world. On the other hand, government social spending in Brazil is one of the highest in Latin America. The fact that the net impact of previous policy measures on social indicators has been less than satisfactory suggests that a better design and assessment of poverty alleviation policies is needed. One approach that enhances the assessment of tax-benefit systems is microsimulation modelling. This approach takes information about a nationally representative sample of the population and simulates the effects of detailed policy rules on that population, incorporating the interactions of different elements of the tax-benefit system and taking full account of the diversity of characteristics in the population. This paper assesses the feasibility of building a microsimulation model for Brazil. In particular it examines the possibility of using an existing microsimulation framework, taking the software used in the development of the European Union’s EUROMOD cross-country model as a basis