New Customs Requirements for Brazil Coming In 2020

Starting on the first day of 2020, if you’re shipping to Brazil you’ll need to abide by new customs requirements, forever changing the way people receive international packages in Brazil. Brazil’s postal operator Empresa de Correios e Telegraphos (or ECT, for short) recently announced that Brazil will no longer accept packages without the importer’s Tax ID Number. ECT also stated that any packages missing this information are subject to return to the original sender or destruction if return is not possible. That’s no fun, so this is something that all shippers who send goods to Brazil need to be aware of.

What is My Brazilian Recipient’s Tax ID Number?

If your Brazilian customer (also called the importer) doesn’t provide you with their Tax ID number when they place their order, you should contact them before shipping and require it. In Brazil, the importer’s Tax ID Number is called the CPF for natural persons (people), and CNPJ for legal persons (companies). If it helps, the formatting of the two different identification types is as follows:

• CPF: 000.000.000-00
• CNPJ: 00.000.000/0000-00

You’ll need to put this Tax ID number onto the shipping label.

Include Your Recipient’s Brazilian Tax ID on the Shipping Label

As part of these new customs requirements, Brazil’s postal operator has requested that shippers include the importer’s Tax ID Number on the customs forms. Because this change has been so sudden and unexpected, many shipping software interfaces don’t have a dedicated field for printing this Brazilian Tax ID number. To get around that, you may need to hand-write the Tax ID number into the “Importer’s Reference” field in the customs form of the label (if available) or just put the Tax ID number next to the recipient’s name on the shipping label. You can either type this number in when you’re creating the label, or write it onto the label after printing.

If You Forget, Tell Your Recipient To Use the Backup!

To help minimize the number of packages that get returned, ECT has developed a new electronic tool that Brazilian citizens can use. This tool allows the importer (the recipient) to provide their Tax ID Number before their package arrives in Brazil. However, this tool is basically just a back-up for items that don’t have the importer’s Tax ID Number on the customs form.