Receive in dollars while living in Brazil?
Your company is foreign, but your client is in Brazil. How do you charge for that service without being devoured by fees or falling into a fine-mesh audit? Billing in dollars while living in Brazil is many people's dream, but if you do not know the money trail, that dream can turn into a bureaucratic nightmare.
Invoicing: the international invoice
The first step is the invoice. Forget the Brazilian electronic invoice; for your offshore, the document is the international invoice. It must be clear, detail the service, and, above all, comply with what your client's bank will require to authorize the remittance.
If the invoice is wrong, the money does not leave Brazil.
Withholding taxes: what is lost along the way
Attention: when a Brazilian client pays a foreign company, it is often required to withhold taxes at source, such as IRRF. You need to know whether your service qualifies under double taxation agreements. If you do not factor this into your final price, you will find out you received 15% or 25% less than agreed.
Flow platforms: Bitwage and remittance
Do not rely only on traditional SWIFT transfers, which are slow and expensive. Use flow platforms like Bitwage, Wise, or Husky. They create a "bridge" where your client pays in local currency and the money lands in your offshore account in dollars or euros almost instantly and with lower fees than big banks.
Global payment links
Want to make it easy for your client? Use global payment links via Stripe or PayPal. Your client pays with their Brazilian credit card — with IOF, of course — but you receive the clean amount in your international account.
It is the fastest way to close a deal, especially for smaller tickets or consulting services.
The foreign-exchange game
Currency exchange can be your friend or your enemy. At Startaway, we help you decide when to bring funds into your personal pocket in Brazil and when to keep capital invested in the offshore to take advantage of exchange variation in your favor.
Billing in Brazil with a foreign company is your biggest chance to win on currency arbitrage.
