Small business address pay or escritorio or your home address

An attorney friend told me a home address would be okay.

Thank you🙏🏻

I have a small business that as yet has no business activity with a CNPJ and am wondering if I have to pay for an escritorio (basically a shared office) to register it there or if I can register it at a home address (an apartment I am renting for family).
-@marcotenore

If you already have permanent visa status, or do not seek it, then this should not be a problem.

However if you are going to use it as a basis for a permanent visa application (eg an investor visa), then 95% of the time you cannot use it as a permanent address - only as a temporary one, until you establish the actual adress that the business is going to trade from.

Because, for an investor visa, the Federal Police WILL visit your registered address, probably after a couple of years, to verfiy that it is genuinely trading there, employing Brazilians, etc, as part of the initial grant process before making it a permanent visa.

You cannot run a business from an apartment (it is illegal in a condo, with very few exceptions), therefore your application would be rejected, and you would have to leave Brazil. The exception here is if you are running a residential type business within the complex - eg property management or cleaning services.

To change an address for a business involves rewriting the Social Contract, and changing records held with the Receita Federal, Federal Police, etc - expensive, so best to be avoided if you can.

You can register a home address for a business, but only if that home is intrinsic to the business operation, eg accomodation above a restaurant, in a pousada, a house next to a construction site you are building - to name just 3.

So the answer is not quite as straightforward as you might hope for - depends on the business and what purpose you need it for...

Hi Thank you for that detailed answer. It's a business owned by a Brazilian citizen and not for visa purposes but thank you for all that information, good stuff🙏🏻

Hi Thank you for that detailed answer. It's a business owned by a Brazilian citizen and not for visa purposes but thank you for all that information, good stuff🙏🏻
-@marcotenore

Great - then no problem!

Remember of course that you may use a condo address to initially register a business, but you cannot run a physical business from an apartment in a condo, except as outlined above.

Yes, thank you🙏🏻