All about taxes for expats in Brazil

In my opinion, one should find an accountant with knowledge of foreign taxes living in Brazil as well as if you work in Brazil. Now finding such an accountant may be difficult in smaller cities.
Being a permanent resident of Brasil and having assets in the US, I need to take care not to trigger some kind of income tax.
Having a Brazilian spouse who works I have filed my US taxes as married and not joint to avoid any chance of double taxation.
There is no tax treaty between the US and Brazil.
There are many steps in filing taxes in Brazil and unless you have a good account to help, you can face an unknown tax. By "unknown" most of the payment systems are online and due dates may slip your mind. Over the years you would receive a notice via mail.
Taxes are a personal issue and an expat must find as much information as he or she can.

10/27/21

Everything that Texanbrazil writes is spot-on.

Different individuals have different needs.  Like Texanbrazil,  I file my US taxes as "Married, Filing Separately"  because my Brazilian spouse has no intention of ever living in the US, so it makes no sense for us to expose him to potential tax liability there by even putting him in the system.  We file our Brazilian taxes jointly; that meets our needs.

One of my first priorities in moving to Manaus was finding an accountant that we felt we could trust.  We're contemplating a move, and that will be a high priority item in our new city, too.

Brazilian taxation is complicated, and often seems contradictory.   Qualified professional help makes it a lot easier.  Just ignoring it can be a big mistake for an expat.

As a UK citizen living and working in Brazil, I only pay tax here. I opened a small 2 person company with my wife which I use to receive payment for my work. The accountant takes care of everything, I just give him the fiscal note once I get paid. I think the total tax is around 11% total doing it this way, which is much less than I'd be paying in the UK. I also don't need to pay any other tax to the UK while earning in Brazil. If I were to go the route of getting paid as an individual, I believe the tax would be 27.5%. At the end of the year, we pay our accountant for the paperwork he fills out and sends to us for signing, and that's it. I think we pay him ~R$370 a month, but he is very good and works for the local government so he knows his stuff.

I would be very interested to chat with you upon my arrival.

I have been delayed to fly to Brazil, but have plans to come still and make this work.

I do have some capital and some ideas, maybe being there you can point me into the right direction.

Taxes on my mind: So I'm sitting down to get this thing done and it is actually quite easy because my income sources are set and pretty standard. So here's the thing: my Portuguese speaking partner is going to have to start reporting on US income starting next year. Shouldn't be a big deal because I plan on helping her do that. STILL, let's say I'm no longer around to do that and she is quite unprepared to face the US IRS. I am still hunting for a bilingual solution so that she can take care of this independently.

She's also faced with the fact that her tax consultant for her Brazilian taxes is a pretty old fellow who may not be able to continue in the near future. What my dream is would be a bilingual tax consultant/software/firm to handle her (our) fairly simple multi-country tax filing needs.

Thx for any useful suggestions and please send direct messages to avoid any "advertising" issues on the forum if you are going to make a direct suggestion.
MattB

To my knowledge, there isn't such a firm. 
You need an accountant in USA familiar with international taxation and a different accountant in Brazil familiar with international taxation.
My best friend in USA is a CPA, works for US Treasury, but wants to go out on his own, so he and I are working together to figure out all this stuff.  He wants to hang out a shingle but he is not there yet.  We will certainly let you all know.

Meantime .... I am going to file married joint in USA next year.  Maria will never live in USA, her USA taxes will always be minimal and Herb can figure them out for her....but I will get huge deductions for filing married join instead of married single.  On the other hand, the very day that I die she can put in to end her status as (taxable) non-resident alien so she won't have to file here anymore.