Import tax on clothing

Fight it? You obviously don't know the Receita Federal. You'd be wasting your time and making yourself crazy to boot.

There is a very heavy import tax on everything which BEGINS at 60% and goes up from there depending on the kind of items imported. The Receita Federal DOES NOT base the tax on the price you paid (especially if it was discounted), but rather on their own list of prices that they determine the items should be retailed for and you also pay duty on the cost of shipping as well. That's why you got zapped when they arrived here in Brazil.

Costly lesson in living in Brazil, if you can't buy it here don't import it from abroad, it's not worth it unless you actually travel abroad and bring it back with you and it's under the duty free limit you're allowed.

Cheers,
William James Woodward, Expat-blog Experts Team

Thank you. Very expensive lesson learned

USD $274.00 = R$657,60 this is the price (if they accept the discounted price) you will be charged import tax on. X 0,60 = R$394,56 so actually they charged you less than 60% or they didn't tax you on shipping as they usually do if you have to pay R$300. Even at the discounted price you'd pay R$344.

The total was $239 which includes the shipping. The cost of the clothing was $203. My wording was confusing. It looks like they charged me 60%. Still quite lucky I guess.

You will find out before you've been in Brazil for very long that EVERYTHING in this country is about taxes. They tax everything to the absolute maximum and nothing escapes taxation.

Every product, service and utility has up to 6 taxes built into the final price. Food (with very few exceptions) is taxed, some items have a tax load of up to 80%; in fact, the overall average on your total food bill works out to 22%. Your electric, water, gas and telephone bills all have a number of taxes on top of the consumption charges. Every financial transaction bears a tax too. In many cases you're even taxed on the taxes.

On top of all of those built in taxes, if the product is imported, then there is the additional 60% import tax. This not only makes the price of imported products ridiculously high, but it also keeps the prices of domestic products artificially high since manufacturers don't need to establish competitive prices and charge as much as they can. The only restriction essentially is that they keep their prices slightly under those of similar imported products.

What, you may ask, do Brazilians get in return for all those taxes? Well sadly, and even the government brags about this fact, they get very little (almost nothing) in return.

This morning, I was looking at the sales on J.Crew's website - J. Crew is an American clothing company that ships to Brazil -  and I wanted to purchase 3 items.

However, when I went to check out, I noticed that my grand total came to a whopping US $225.26 for 3 items that cost a total of US $80.47 before taxes.

$35 for shipping - THIS I understand and don't have a problem with.

But $71.08 for DUTIES? 

And $38.71 for TAXES? 

If I was purchasing these 3 items from the US, I'd have to pay $95.07 including shipping and taxes.

How does anyone afford to shop in this country?    And I'm not just referring to buying imported goods...I was at my local mall recently and I walked into the Brazilian clothing store, Animale, which is supposedly popular with Brazilian women. The quality of the clothing on display looked cheap (the clothes were not my style) but the prices were through the roof. $1000 reais for a dress that would cost US $250 at best at an American department store (and I'm not even saying that the dress would even be worth $250 but $250 is where it would be priced at.) What the hell, Brazil?!

First mistake was shopping at a mall. Their prices are always inflated to pay the astronomical rents they're being charged. You'll always get much better deals at small shops (even specialty shops) in the neighborhoods a bit farther from the city center. For example, when I lived in Pirituba (zona norte-oeste de São Paulo) I rarely purchased anything outside of the neighborhood. Prices were always lower and there are a large number of shops of every variety in the neighborhood. It is big enough that it actually has 2 commercial (retail) districts one centered around Av. Benedito de Andrade and Av. Paula Ferreira (Vila Barreto), and another a bit farther out on Av. Raimundo Pereira de Magalhães (Vila Comercial). There are a number of women's and men's fashion shops, cosmetic shops, gift shops, etc.

FYI, If you buy goods online worth less that $35, you do not pay import taxes. It is incredible what you can buy in US for $35 compared to what you have here for R$80 (I buy quite often little item on biggest US online shop).
Brazil is extremely protectionist. At some point, it  will have to change because Brazil cannot expectt for ever to export a lot of products to free markets all arround the world without opening its frontiers. Meantime Brazil protects its clothing local market which totally archaic and unproductive. On the positive side, it pushed multitnationals to invest heavily in Brazil.  All big cars manufacters have their factories in Brazil. The chinese company Foxconn, the main worldwide Apple´s manufactorer, is creating in Brazil a huge factory to produce Ipad and Iphone, etc...

About importation taxes, well, they are existing in all countries, even in US. Generally all clothes sold in US and Europe are produced in Asia. Despite being taxed, they are still very cheap. Because 10-30% on a $5 asian shirt is transparent when the product is sold $20-30 in US.