Remote work for foreign companies: how to serve clients abroad without leaving Brazil

Getting paid in dollars while living in Brazil in 2026: individual or company, carne-leao, invoicing, payment rails, and the step most people skip, which is landing the contract.

It is legal, it is common and it requires no visa. Living in Brazil, you remain a Brazilian tax resident, so income in dollars or euros is taxed here. There are two paths: as an individual, declaring through the monthly carnê-leão with progressive rates up to 27.5%, and as a company, invoicing through a CNPJ and paying tax according to the chosen regime. Since January 2026, anyone with monthly taxable income up to R$ 5,000 is exempt from income tax under Law 15.270/2025, with partial relief up to R$ 7,350. Payment arrives through multi-currency accounts or remittance platforms. And the hardest step is none of those. It is landing the contract.

This guide covers the operational side and then tackles the real bottleneck, which almost no content on the subject addresses.

What the relationship looks like when the company is abroad

A foreign company with no Brazilian entity will not hire you under CLT, the Brazilian employment regime. In practice there are three formats:

Contractor. You provide the service, issue an invoice and get paid for the work. It is the most common format. There is no paid vacation, no thirteenth salary and no FGTS, and that has to be in your hourly rate. Employer of record. The company hires you through an intermediary with operations in Brazil, such as Deel, Remote or similar. You get a local employment contract, and the foreign company pays the intermediary. Platform freelancing. Upwork and similar, where the platform handles payment and charges a commission.

The first gives the most freedom and the most responsibility. The second gives legal certainty and costs more for the hiring side, so it usually shows up only in more senior roles or at larger companies.