Export to Brazil from Italy: duties, rules and first steps

On 9 September 2026 Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, led more than 100 Italian companies to São Paulo. His ministry had a number to show for it: in the first month after the EU–Mercosur trade agreement started to apply, Italian exports to Brazil grew 22.3%.

If you’re weighing whether to export to Brazil, that 22.3% is a reason to look, not yet a reason to ship. First, what Italy already sells there. Then the money: the taxes your buyer pays when goods land, and the duty cuts with their dates. After that come the paperwork, the ways in and a 90-day plan.

How much does Italy export to Brazil, and what?

Plenty, and mostly machines. The ICE office in São Paulo counted €6.25 billion of Italian goods sold in Brazil last year, up 6% on 2024. Almost a third was machinery and equipment: €1.92 billion. Pharmaceuticals came next with €914 million, then vehicles at €685 million and chemicals at €505 million, while food and drinks together made roughly €331 million.

The Foreign Ministry’s count is lower, €5.8 billion, but on its figures Brazil still takes 76.6% of everything Italy sells to the Mercosur bloc. As of September 2025, 1,104 branches of Italian companies were operating there. Italy ranked eighth among Brazil’s suppliers, far behind China (€63.0 billion), the United States (€39.9 billion) and Germany (€12.8 billion).

With 213.4 million people in mid-2025 by IBGE’s estimate, it’s a big market. The part you can actually sell to is a much smaller number. Work it out with TAM, SAM and SOM before you book a single trade fair.

Brazil import duties and taxes: what your buyer pays at the border

Here’s what catches exporters out: the duty is just the first of several taxes, some stacked on the others, all paid by your buyer at clearance.

Tax	What it is	Rate	Charged on
II (Imposto de Importação)	The import duty	Set product by product. Before the agreement, EU machinery paid 14% to 20%, cars up to 35%	The customs value
IPI	Federal tax on manufactured goods	Depends on the product	Customs value plus the duty
PIS and COFINS on imports	Two federal contributions	2.1% and 9.65% (general rates)	The customs value
ICMS	The state tax on goods	Set by each state	Customs value plus duty, IPI, other taxes and customs charges, plus the ICMS itself
AFRMM	Surcharge on sea freight	8% on long-haul shipping	The freight

A worked example

Say an importer brings in a machine with a customs value of R$100,000. Assume a 14% duty, 5% IPI and 18% ICMS, all invented for the example, plus the general PIS and COFINS rates. The duty is R$14,000. IPI adds R$5,700, because it’s charged on value plus duty. PIS and COFINS add R$11,750. Then ICMS, the heaviest: about R$28,850, on a base of roughly R$160,300 that already contains everything else, itself included. Total tax? About R$60,300 on a R$100,000 machine.

Now take the duty out, as the agreement will over time for most EU goods. The bill falls to about R$42,400. You save almost R$17,900, more than the duty itself, because IPI and ICMS were charged on it too. Some of the rest comes back: an importer in the non-cumulative regime can take PIS and COFINS as credits. Ask yours what it can offset, then put the real figure into your unit economics, the profit on each unit sold.

Brazil’s tax reform: what changes from 2027

2026 is a test year: the new federal CBS (0.9%) and the new IBS (0.1%) are calculated but offset against PIS and COFINS. In 2027 PIS and COFINS go, the CBS takes over and IPI falls to zero except on goods also made in the Manaus Free Zone. From 2029 the IBS replaces ICMS and the municipal ISS a tenth at a time. In 2033 those two are abolished. Importers still pay under the new law, so ask for quotes on each year’s rules.

EU–Mercosur tariffs: what changes for Italian exporters, and when

First, where things stand. Signed on 17 January 2026, the agreement’s trade part, the interim trade agreement, has applied provisionally since 1 May with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay; Brazil promulgated it by decree on 28 April. Formal entry into force needs the European Parliament’s consent. MEPs can only vote after the EU Court of Justice delivers the opinion they requested on 21 January, by 334 votes to 324. Poland has challenged the Council’s decision too, but on 29 September the Court’s Vice-President refused to suspend provisional application. The cuts are live.

Duties end on over 91% of EU goods, mostly within ten years and a few sensitive ones within fifteen, says the Commission. Brazil’s tariff-reduction manual adds that ‘year 0’ runs to 31 December 2026 and each later cut lands on 1 January. Some cars wait far longer: 18 years for electric and hybrid models.

Before the deal, Mercosur charged EU machinery 14% to 20%, pharmaceuticals up to 14%, chocolate 20% and cheese 28%. Cheese gets its cut only inside a quota, 3,000 tonnes for all EU exporters in the first period, first come, first served.

Wine shows how fine the print gets. Sparkling wine at US$8 a litre FOB (loaded on the ship) or more has entered duty-free since 1 May. Below that line the old duty stays until 1 January 2038, then goes in one step. Still wines lose theirs gradually. Making Prosecco or Franciacorta? Check your price per litre. Italian wine imported by Brazil in 2025 averaged about US$4.60 a litre (MAPA data, our arithmetic): 10.8 million litres, fourth behind Chile’s 78.1 million, Argentina and Portugal.

One condition applies to every cut. The goods must originate in the EU, and passing through it isn’t enough. You prove origin with a statement on your commercial documents that quotes your REX number, the EU’s registered exporter code. Our guide to the EU–Mercosur agreement for Italian SMEs covers the origin rules, and our EU–Mercosur playbook (PDF and Excel, €99) adds the tariff schedules, the procedures and a calculator that prices an export before and after the cuts.

How to export to Brazil: importer, approvals and labels

Brazilian customs deal with the importer, not with you. So first: can your buyer import at all? It needs Receita Federal clearance to operate in Siscomex, the foreign-trade system, usually called Radar. In the limited modality a company may import up to US$50,000 or US$150,000 every six months, depending on its estimated financial capacity. Bigger volumes need the unlimited one.

Exporting to Brazil: requirements by product

Then your product. Up to three bodies may have to say yes.

• ANVISA, the health regulator. To import finished cosmetics, medicines, medical devices or sanitisers, the importer needs its operating authorisation, the AFE.
• MAPA, the agriculture ministry, for wine and other drinks. The importer must be registered with MAPA for the product, and every shipment needs an inspection certificate: lab tests start at R$300, and MAPA puts the whole process at 1 to 120 days.
• INMETRO, for goods under compulsory conformity assessment, whose import needs its prior consent and a certificate from an accredited body.

Food can fall under ANVISA or MAPA, so check before you quote. On labels, Brazil’s consumer code wants product information that is correct, clear, precise, prominent and in Portuguese (Lei 8.078/1990, art. 31). And if your machine has no equivalent produced in Brazil, your importer can ask the MDIC for an ‘ex-tarifário’, a temporary duty cut for capital goods and IT equipment.

Selling in Brazil from Europe: importer, agent or your own company

Most SMEs start with an importer-distributor that holds the clearance, the approvals, the stock and the customers, and can be invoiced in euros. You trade some control for speed. With ANVISA products much of the paperwork runs on the importer’s authorisation, so agree in writing who holds the registrations if you part ways.

An agent (representante comercial) finds buyers for a commission while someone else imports. Careful here. Under Lei 4.886/1965, ending the contract without just cause costs at least one twelfth of all the commission the agent ever earned, plus, on open-ended contracts older than six months, 30 days’ notice or a third of the last three months’ commission.

Your own company usually comes later, once you hold stock, hire or invoice in reais. Our guide to expanding to Latin America from Italy weighs each route. Still torn? Go through the six questions for a market entry strategy first. Then put the decision on one page, a go-to-market plan saying who buys from you, through whom and at what price.

Payments and currency risk

Then the real. The European Central Bank’s reference rate was 6.07 reais to the euro on 20 August 2026 and 5.58 on 5 October. On a R$600,000 invoice, that’s the gap between about €98,900 and €107,400. This time the swing helped. Invoice in euros if you can, or hedge with your bank. For deferred terms, SACE’s Credito Fornitore insures export sales against commercial and political risk and lets you assign the receivable to a bank.

Who can help: SIMEST, SACE, ICE and the chambers

SIMEST, part of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti group, has a soft loan for Italian firms that export to, buy from or invest in Central and South America, and for their regular suppliers. An SME can borrow the lower of 35% of average revenue over two years and €2.5 million, at 0.371% over six years. Up to 10% can be a grant, 20% for innovative startups and SMEs or firms in the South, within de minimis limits. See our guide to SIMEST financing.

Agenzia ICE works from São Paulo, where it also runs a desk for intellectual property and trade barriers, and has a correspondent point in Rio de Janeiro. You’ll find Italian chambers of commerce in Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Florianópolis in the south, and in São Paulo, Rio and Belo Horizonte too. Before signing with a distributor, ask the nearest one what it knows about them.

Running a startup rather than an SME? Start from our map from zero to a first round. For help with the Brazil plan itself, there’s our cross-border expansion service.

Checklist: your first 90 days in Brazil

1. Week one: find your tariff code (the NCM), today’s duty and its cut schedule.
2. Price one real order from your factory gate to the Brazilian shelf, with every tax and the importer’s margin in it.
3. Ask the importer who has to approve your product (ANVISA, MAPA, INMETRO or nobody) and how long that took on their last similar import.
4. Shortlist three importers and ask each for its Siscomex modality and existing registrations.
5. Register for REX and draft your statement on origin.
6. Get labels and documents into Portuguese, checked by the importer.
7. Settle currency and payment terms; get a SACE quote if you’ll sell on credit.
8. By day 90: a pilot order priced on real tax figures, and the SIMEST measure checked before you spend.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or customs advice. Duties and taxes depend on your product’s code and change often: check the official schedules and ask a customs broker or tax adviser before you quote a price.