Comment by rbanffy
15 hours ago
> extremely high taxes
I always find this funny. Brazilian taxes are nowhere near what I would say “high”. I pay about twice as much out of my compensation as I would pay in Brazil, and that would be as if I did zero tax optimisation back then.
I can second this.
Compared to many countries Brazil doesn't have such high taxes (I'd say that if you work remotely for a company outside of Brazil, you'll probably have much lower taxes compared to almost any other country -- working locally the difference isn't as big, but you have higher taxes in many other places).
What it really lacks is access to capital (which is the real "mojo" of the US compared to the rest of the world).
Also the bureaucracy, employee rights, etc.
Incorporating and getting a functional business entity in Brazil is harder. In USA I literally do in 5min online including bank account. In Brazil they are taking out microscopes to verify your signature on the paperwork matches.
And in the USA if you have one bad employee, just fire them any time. In Brazil for better or for worse nowhere near as easy. Obviously better for employees but businesses don’t like it because you can get stuck with a employee dragging down everyone unless you pay them a years salary etc.
Import taxes in Brazil are 60%, plus something like 18% on top of the product, shipping and the aforementioned import taxes.
The result is a nearly 100% tax on computers and consumer electronics.
One for you, one for the government.
And it's getting worse. Tariffs on computer hardware were raised only a few months ago.
Parent was referring to the cost of hardware. I've had colleagues from brazil visit the US and go absolutely crazy at best buy to grab as much hardware as they could (laptops, nintendo switch, etc), because it's prohibitively expensive for them to buy that at home.
It's not "prohibitively" expensive if they managed to pay for flights to the US, hotels and then buy several pieces of hardware. They definitely had more than enough money to buy whatever they wanted in Brazil. It is, however, much more expensive than it should be, which leaves a bad taste in our mouths and means people will find other ways of acquiring some items.
It was a business trip, but yeah.
Yeah. Brazilians go nuts when they see US prices. Every family member who travels to the US is showered with purchase requests. Anything they manage to bring back without being taxed essentially receives a 50% discount.
As an employee: your taxes are not that high, but public services are terrible so most of middle-class ends up paying for the private alternative as well.
As a business owner: not so bad if you are a freelancing or just a few business partners providing some type of service, but terrible the moment you start considering employing other people.
> but public services are terrible
Have you seen the public services of countries with lower taxes? Their public hospitals?
> but terrible the moment you start considering employing other people.
Employing people isn't cheap anywhere (except, perhaps, in the US, where labour rights are kind of nonexistent)
I live in Germany. No such thing as public hospitals. And I pay close to 1200€/month in health insurance to the public insurance company.
I quick visit to the dermatologist to check for some tiny bumps that showed up in my forehead: 60€, out of pocket, because the insurer doesn't cover it.
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