How a Brazilian exporter gets paid, and why it affects your terms

The short answer

Brazil rewrote its foreign exchange law in 2021, and the new text took effect at the end of December 2022. Three things follow from it that matter to a buyer. An exporter is allowed to keep export proceeds abroad rather than being forced to bring them into Brazil. The rigid, prescribed exchange contract that used to sit between a shipment and its payment is gone, replaced by a free form operation with a short set of required data. And the tax on money entering the country as export revenue is zero. Each of those loosens the receiving side, which is why a seller who understands the current rules can be more flexible on payment terms than an out of date guide would predict.

None of this is your obligation to arrange. It sits on the Brazilian side of the deal, and knowing it tells you which requirements a supplier can honestly claim, and which are a leftover from a system that no longer exists.

The law that replaced the old regime

The governing act is Lei nº 14.286, de 29 de dezembro de 2021, published on 30 December 2021. It covers the Brazilian exchange market, Brazilian capital abroad, foreign capital in the country, and reporting to the central bank. Article 29 gives it a one year vacância, so it entered into force on 31 December 2022. The central bank issued its implementing resolutions, numbered 277 and 278, dated 31 December 2022, which confirms the timing.

The scale of the change is the point. According to the central bank's own presentation, the law folded roughly 440 articles spread across more than 40 acts into a single statute of 29 articles. Article 2 states the general principle: operations in the exchange market may be carried out freely, with no limit on value. Article 3 sets the one hard channel, that these operations run only through institutions authorised by the central bank. The same law is looked at from the corporate side on the page about setting up a Brazilian company, which deals with the opposite direction, a foreign founder registering a structure in Brazil rather than a buyer paying one.

The repatriation rule, and the myth around it

This is the part most secondary sources still get wrong, so it is worth stating precisely.

There is no mandatory repatriation of export proceeds in Brazil. Article 26 of Lei 14.286/2021 changed article 1 of Lei 11.371/2006, which now reads that keeping export revenue abroad is optional: "Fica facultada a manutenção, no exterior, dos recursos em moeda estrangeira relativos aos recebimentos de exportações brasileiras de mercadorias e de serviços para o exterior." The operative word is "facultada," meaning permitted, a right rather than a duty. An exporter of goods or services may hold the foreign currency it receives outside the country.

The quantitative ceiling that used to limit how much could be held abroad is also gone. The old power of the Conselho Monetário Nacional to set quantitative limits, and the old bar on using those funds in credit operations, were removed by the 2021 wording. No percentage cap survives in the current text.

The legal foundation of the old surrender regime was repealed outright. Decreto-Lei 9.025/1946, the historical basis for the rule that export earnings had to be handed over inside Brazil, is named in article 28 of Lei 14.286/2021 among the acts it revokes.

The common claim runs the other way. A large number of secondary sources, including recent consulting articles, still describe Brazil as forcing exporters to bring proceeds home and convert them locally. Against the current text of the law that is simply incorrect, and has been since 31 December 2022. It was already softened well before that. Under the pre 2021 rules, an exporter could keep the entirety of its proceeds abroad, a position that goes back to a 2012 central bank circular. So even the version of the myth that points at "the way it used to be" describes a state of affairs that ended more than a decade ago.

The exchange contract today

For decades a Brazilian foreign exchange payment ran through a contrato de câmbio, a prescribed instrument between the buyer and seller of the foreign currency that recorded the operation's characteristics and terms. That form no longer exists in its old shape.

The resolution now in force sets it out. On form, article 2 of Resolução BCB 277 states that the way an exchange operation is concluded is free, "é livre a forma de celebração de operação de câmbio." There is no mandatory blank to fill in any more. What replaced the rigid form is a minimum set of data. Article 3 requires a defined list of information, drawn from an annex: identification of the client, the operation number in the Sistema Câmbio, the date, whether it is a purchase or a sale, the currency, the amounts, the rate, the form of delivery, the settlement date, and the purpose of the operation. Article 8 requires the authorised institution to keep the client's confirmation of consent and the supporting documents for ten years.

The channel rule is the same as in the law. Article 13 states that payment abroad or receipt from abroad has to go through an institution authorised to operate in the exchange market. Two timing limits are worth knowing. Article 38 sets a maximum of 1,500 days between the shipment of the goods or the provision of the service and the settlement of the export exchange operation, which is a little over four years. Article 21 gives 360 days to return an advance abroad that was not worked off by a shipment, unless the payer abroad agrees to redirect it to another purpose.

A note on sourcing. The subject matter of Resolução BCB 277, that it regulates the exchange market under Lei 14.286/2021, is confirmed from primary central bank material. The exact article text was taken from copies of the resolution rather than from the central bank's own site, which did not return the full text, so the safe reading is that the current resolution establishes these rules, not a guaranteed word for word quotation.

What the old regime required	What applies now
A prescribed exchange contract form	Free form operation, article 2 of Res. BCB 277
Fixed template with mandated fields	A minimum data set, article 3
Operation through an authorised institution	Same, article 13 of the resolution and article 3 of the law
Mandatory surrender of proceeds in Brazil	Proceeds may be held abroad, article 26 of Lei 14.286/2021

The tax on incoming export revenue is zero

The tax people worry about here is the IOF, the tax on financial operations, set by Decreto nº 6.306, de 14 de dezembro de 2007. On the operation that matters to a buyer, the rate is zero.

Article 15-B, item I, fixes it: on exchange operations relating to the entry into the country of export revenue from goods and services, the rate is zero, "zero." The wording came in through a 2014 amending decree and remains in the consolidated text. The federal tax authority confirms it. The Procuradoria-Geral da Fazenda Nacional states that the zero rate applies to exchange contracts for export revenue where the central bank's requirements on form and timing are met, citing the same article, on a page updated 29 October 2025.

The practical reading is narrow. For a foreign buyer paying for goods from Brazil, the IOF on the export revenue arriving at the exporter is zero. It is not a cost embedded in your price.

Where confusion comes in is that the same tax carries other rates on other operations, and those get quoted out of context. Transfers abroad sit at 3.5% under item XXI. Other inflows of funds from abroad sit at 0.38% under item XXV. A 1.10% rate exists for certain resident transfers abroad for investment purposes. None of those is the tax on paying for a Brazilian product, and none should be presented as such. There is no separate IOF rate on the import of services in the current text of that article, so anyone who quotes one is filling a gap that the rule does not fill.

Can a foreign buyer hold an account in Brazil

A non resident can hold an account in reais. Article 5, §4 of Lei 14.286/2021 gives accounts in reais held by non residents the same treatment as accounts in reais held by residents, except for procedures the central bank may set, and item VIII of the same article gives the central bank the power to regulate the opening and movement of those accounts.

The current regulation is in Título VII of Resolução BCB 277, on non resident accounts in reais. Article 67 lets authorised institutions open, maintain and close deposit and payment accounts in reais held by non residents, on the same conditions as for residents, with no prior central bank authorisation. Article 68 allows the movement of third party funds only where the account holder is an institution domiciled or seated abroad that is subject to financial regulation and supervision, and requires operations above R$ 10,000 to run as corresponding credits and debits through accounts at authorised Brazilian institutions.

One terminology point saves confusion in older material. The current term is "non-resident account in reais." You may still see "conta de domiciliado no exterior," which is the pre 2022 wording from the old central bank manual. It described the same idea, an account in national currency in Brazil held by a person or company resident, domiciled or seated abroad, but the current resolution does not use it and speaks of the "não residente" instead. Treat the older phrase as a signal that the material predates the current rules.

DU-E, the export declaration

The document that records an export to the Brazilian customs and tax authorities is the DU-E, the Declaração Única de Exportação. It is an electronic declaration carrying information of a customs, administrative, commercial, financial, tax and logistical nature about the export operation, filed through the Portal Único Siscomex. Its normative basis is Instrução Normativa RFB nº 1.702/2017, with later amendments.

The DU-E replaced three older instruments: the Registro de Exportação, the Declaração de Exportação in its web and large scale versions, and the Declaração Simplificada de Exportação. References in older guides to registering an export through the RE describe a form that no longer exists.

What this page does not claim is a direct normative link between the DU-E and the exchange settlement. The Receita Federal page describing the DU-E does not set out a rule tying the exchange operation to the export declaration, so we do not assert one.

Why this matters to a buyer

The receiving side in Brazil is looser than a buyer reading old material would expect, and that shows up in a negotiation in a few concrete ways.

Because there is no forced repatriation and no ceiling on holding proceeds abroad, a Brazilian exporter is not under a legal clock to convert your payment into reais by a near deadline. A supplier who insists that Brazilian rules force an immediate local conversion, and prices or paces the deal around that, is describing a regime that ended.

Because the exchange contract is free form with a modest data set and a long outer settlement window, the paperwork on the seller's side is not the bottleneck it once was. The 1,500 day limit between shipment and settlement, and the 360 day rule for returning an unused advance, are the timing constraints that actually bind, and both are generous. If a seller ties a slow or awkward payment step to "the câmbio process," the current rules give you room to ask what specifically requires it.

Because the IOF on incoming export revenue is zero, the tax is not a reason for a price premium on the Brazilian side of a straightforward goods payment. The other IOF rates you may find quoted attach to different operations.

How the money is actually secured, through a letter of credit, a collection or otherwise, is a separate question handled on letters of credit and collections and in the wider payment terms overview. Whether the exporter you are paying is real and accredited to export is covered on verifying a Brazilian exporter, and the choice of what to buy runs from sourcing from Brazil. This page is only about what the currency rules on the receiving side do and do not require.

None of the above is a substitute for advice from a professional who can look at your specific transaction. It describes the rules as written and where they came from, so that a claim made across the table can be checked against them.

Sources

• The exchange law: Lei nº 14.286, de 29 de dezembro de 2021, arts. 2, 3, 5, 26, 28 and 29, planalto.gov.br. Primary source. The end of December 2022 effective date follows from the one year period in article 29 and the 31 December 2022 date of the implementing resolutions. Scale of consolidation from the central bank's "Lei Cambial" presentation, PDF on bcb.gov.br.
• Repatriation: article 26 of Lei 14.286/2021 amending article 1 of Lei 11.371/2006, both planalto.gov.br, primary source. The repeal of Decreto-Lei 9.025/1946 in article 28 of the same law. The pre 2021 position that full proceeds could be held abroad from the old central bank manual, RMCCI, in the version under a 2012 circular, PDF on bcb.gov.br, cited as historical.
• The exchange contract: Resolução BCB nº 277, de 31 de dezembro de 2022, arts. 2, 3, 8, 13, 21 and 38. Subject and ementa confirmed from primary central bank material, the Voto do BC 134/2023 and the Siscomex legislation index on gov.br. Article text confirmed from two independent secondary copies of the resolution, because the central bank site returned only a JavaScript shell without the text. Read as "the current resolution establishes," not as a guaranteed quotation.
• IOF: Decreto nº 6.306, de 14 de dezembro de 2007, article 15-B, items I, XXI and XXV, consolidated text on planalto.gov.br, primary source. Confirmation of the zero rate on incoming export revenue from the Procuradoria-Geral da Fazenda Nacional, gov.br, page updated 29 October 2025. No separate IOF rate on the import of services appears in the current text of that article.
• Non resident accounts: article 5, §4 and item VIII of Lei 14.286/2021, planalto.gov.br, primary source. Título VII of Resolução BCB 277, arts. 67 and 68, from a secondary copy of the resolution as above. The older term "conta de domiciliado no exterior" from the pre 2022 central bank manual, PDF on bcb.gov.br.
• DU-E: Receita Federal page on the Declaração Única de Exportação and Instrução Normativa RFB nº 1.702/2017, gov.br, primary source. That page does not describe a normative link between the DU-E and the exchange contract, so none is stated here.
• Resoluções BCB 521 and 561, which amend Resolução BCB 277 with later effective dates, come from a secondary consolidated version and are not relied on here.

Facts on this page were checked on 8 September 2026. Brazil's exchange rules were rewritten in 2021 and 2022 and secondary sources have been slow to catch up, so the act, the article and the date matter more than any summary of them.