> I pay about twice as much out of my compensation as I would pay in Brazil

Brazil relies heavily on indirect taxation, not income tax.

The average Brazilian effectively pays about *41.1%* of their gross income in taxes when all major taxes are included. (https://ibpt.org.br/brasileiro-trabalha-150-dias-por-ano-ape...)

They break it down as: roughly 15.2% from income-related taxes, 3.1% from property taxes, and *22.9% from consumption taxes*.

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And anyway, the real problem is that the burden of tax is way way higher for a brazilian than someone in the global north.

As a general rule, in Brazil only people who do qualified work can reach the (converted) 1000 USD threshold. People who spent years in university or trade school, and are either very good at their jobs or graduated in prestigious professions such as engineering, law or medicine.

Even if they were to pay no taxes, most 40-hour week professional programmers here would still earn, at the end of the day, less than a high-school diploma 20-hour worker in US. Let that sink in.

Now take into account that on average, out of those $1000, $400 becomes taxes: In practice, there are lots of qualified workers here who don't even make $8k/year after taxes...

And no, the lower living cost does NOT offset it. Imported/technology goods are disproportionately expensive relative to income since we receive in BRL but still pay the dollar price, if not higher, due to said consumption taxes.

It's nigh-impossible to have true disposable income that your average Joe or plain Jane can use to dedicate to homebrew their personal projects in Brazil. And when it happens, it tends to in software form, since software still is relatively cheap to make.

People whose income in the top 25% bracket here make less in dollars than US's bottom 25% bracket, simple as that.

This is, of course also true of many many countries, which is why you usually don't hear about the new cool tech from Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, Congo, etc. The people who are qualified enough tend to leave the country for better conditions. Of course, I'm not saying it's impossible, but people get surprised, just as you can see in this thread.

user:	troauei
created:	June 17, 2026
karma:	1