Special customs regimes: the complete map.
What they are, which ones exist and how to choose the regime for your operation.

What special customs regimes are — and what they are for

Special customs regimes are treatments that suspend, exempt or refund the taxes of foreign trade, under customs control, as opposed to the common regime — the one in which the import and export taxes are charged in full and definitively at the moment of clearance. Instead of taxing the operation fully and immediately, the special regime temporarily relieves the goods while they fulfill a specific purpose: passing through the territory (transit), being stored (bonded warehouse and depots), entering for a fixed term to return abroad (temporary admission) or being industrialized to export (drawback, RECOF).

This is the logic that separates the special regimes from the common one. In the common regime, import nationalizes the goods and settles the taxes. In the special regime, the taxes remain suspended — and their charge only materializes if the conditions are not met. That is why every special regime rests on a formal commitment: the suspended tax obligations are constituted in a responsibility undertaking signed by the beneficiary (art. 352 of the Customs Regulation), with control of the term of validity and of the destination of the goods.

The parent rule: Book IV of the Customs Regulation

The backbone of every regime is the Customs Regulation — Decree 6.759, of February 5, 2009, which regulates the administration of customs activities and the taxation of foreign trade. It is its Book IV that lists and governs, one by one, the special customs regimes. The original basis of several of them dates back to Decree-Law 37/1966, and the operational rules for temporary admission and export are in RFB Normative Instruction 1.600, of December 14, 2015.

It is worth clearing up, from the outset, a frequent confusion with the special tax regimes (such as REPES, RECAP, PADIS and PATVD, of Laws 11.196/2005 and 11.484/2007): these are based on specific laws, require neither a responsibility undertaking nor a term of validity, and the suspension converts into exemption or a zero rate once the requirement is met. The customs special regimes, by contrast, live in Book IV of the Customs Regulation, with a responsibility undertaking and a term — and it is these that this hub addresses. REPETRO-Sped is a hybrid case, with both a customs and a tax facet.

Which are the special customs regimes — the master table

Which are the special regimes? The Customs Regulation (Decree 6.759/2009) gathers, in Book IV, a set of tax-relief regimes — from Customs Transit to the depots and to the regimes for industrialization to export. It is common for scholars and the market to speak of some “17 modalities”, but a technical caveat is in order: that number is a didactic approximation, not a total fixed by the decree — the count varies depending on how one classifies offshoots such as inward and outward processing, Repex, Reporto, EPZ and baggage. What the law fixes, with precision, is the opening article of each regime — and that is what the table below consolidates.

The Federal Revenue Service organizes these regimes on the Customs and Foreign Trade sub-portal into two groups: those that get their own manual (Transit, Temporary Admission, Temporary Export, Bonded Warehouse, RECOF and REPETRO) and the remaining “other regimes” (depots, drawback, duty-free shop, Repex and Reporto). The master table that follows is the heart of this hub: each row brings the regime, the article of the Customs Regulation, the tax effect and the purpose — and, where there is a regime detailed in the TaxUp ecosystem, the path to go deeper.

Three notes to read the table without stumbling. First: the tax effect varies — most regimes suspend taxes, but drawback also knows exemption and refund, and the DAC produces the peculiar effect of deeming exported the goods. Second: the depots (Special, Bonded, Certified and Free) are four distinct figures that are often confused — we return to them further on. Third: some provisions were amended by later decrees (REPETRO by decrees of 2017 and 2020, the Duty-Free Shop by a 2013 rule), so that the correct reading is always that of the wording in force.

Which regime is mine — the decision tree

The question that reaches the TaxUp team most often is not “what is a special regime”, but “which regime applies to my operation”. The answer does not depend on the product, but on what is going to be done with the goods: do they merely pass through the country? Are they stored? Do they enter for a fixed term to return? Are they going to be industrialized to export? Each answer points to a different branch of the tree. The decisive criterion, therefore, is the purpose and the destination of the goods — and that is where one starts.

One alert that the tree does not show, but which separates the right classification from the wrong one: temporary admission has two tracks. If the good enters only for display, testing or own use and returns abroad in the same state, full suspension applies (art. 353). But if it is employed economically — used to render a service to third parties or to produce goods intended for sale —, the regime is that of economic use (art. 373), with proportional payment of the taxes. Confusing the two is one of the costliest mistakes in foreign trade, and it is the subject of the next section.

Temporary admission — full suspension or 1% per month

Temporary admission is the watershed of the special regimes, and the difference between its two faces is worth money. In the modality with full suspension (art. 353), the good enters for a determined term, fulfills a purpose and returns abroad in the same state — fairs, exhibitions, competitions, tests, repairs — with no payment of taxes during its stay. It is the classic case of goods that are merely on a prolonged passage through the country.

In the modality for economic use (art. 373), the good is employed economically — to render services to third parties or to produce other goods intended for sale. Here the regime does not exempt: it charges in proportion to the time of stay. The Customs Regulation rule is direct — a percentage of 1% (one percent) per month applies, in respect of each month comprised in the term of grant, on the amount of the federal taxes originally due (Import Tax, IPI, PIS/Pasep-Import and Cofins-Import). The difference between the total of the taxes and the proportional amount remains suspended. The operational side is in RFB Normative Instruction 1.600/2015.

A note on terms. As a reference rule, the suspension of payment in the special customs regimes on import is granted for up to one year, extendable at the discretion of the customs authority up to a total of five years and, in exceptional and justified cases, for a longer period, in the form of the regulations. But each regime has its own term — temporary admission, the bonded warehouse and RECOF have specific rules in their own norms —, so this is the general frame, not a single number applicable to everything. The terms of each regime appear in the respective detailed content.

Which are the drawback regimes — the three modalities

Which are the special customs regimes of drawback? Drawback is an export-incentive regime that relieves the inputs employed in the industrialization of a product to be exported, and the Customs Regulation (art. 383) organizes it into three modalities: suspension, exemption and refund. They are not interchangeable — each answers to a different moment of the operation.

In practical language: suspension looks forward (I will import to export); exemption looks sideways (I have already exported, I replenish the stock with an equivalent); refund looks backward (I have already paid and already exported, I want it back). Of the three, suspension is the most used, and its grant and management fall to Secex, via Siscomex. Drawback is a regime with its own cluster in the TaxUp ecosystem — the step by step, the evidencing terms and the accreditation pitfalls are in the content dedicated to drawback.

What the special customs depot regime is

The special customs depot regime is, in practice, a set of figures of storage with suspension of taxes that tend to be confused with one another — and the confusion is costly, because each one has a distinct purpose and legal basis. Let us start with the one closest to the name: the Special Depot (DE), of art. 480 of the Customs Regulation, allows storing, with taxes suspended, parts, pieces and components for the replacement or maintenance of foreign vehicles, machines and equipment. It is the typical depot of assemblers and manufacturers that need to keep replacement stock in the country without nationalizing everything at once.

Alongside it live three other depot figures, which the table below separates to end the frequent confusion:

Note the difference in nature. The DE and the DAF serve technical stocks (replacement parts; repair material for ships and aircraft). The DAC has a peculiar effect: it deems exported, for all tax, credit and exchange purposes, the national goods deposited and sold to a buyer abroad, by means of a contract of delivery within the national territory and to the buyer’s order. And the Free Depot (art. 499) is the most specific of all: it is intended for the storage of foreign goods to serve the commercial flow of neighboring countries with third countries, by international agreement or convention — it is not, as is sometimes said, a mere “area of a foreign country ceded to Brazil”.

It is also worth distinguishing them from the Bonded Warehouse (art. 404), which is the general figure of storage in a bonded facility with suspension of taxes, with its own term rules detailed in its dedicated content. The depots, therefore, are specializations; the bonded warehouse is the broader genus of storage.

What changes with the Tax Reform (Complementary Law 214/2025)

Here is the angle that almost no logistics guide covers — and that makes this hub a legal piece, not just an operational one. The Tax Reform, governed by Complementary Law 214/2025, reaches the special customs regimes as regards the new taxes — IBS and CBS — and creates a normative mismatch that companies will have to manage during the transition.

The starting point is clear and already in the law: art. 84 of Complementary Law 214/2025 provides for the suspension of the payment of IBS and CBS levied on import while the goods are subject to the customs transit regime, in any of its modalities. From there, Complementary Law 214 reorganizes the regimes for IBS/CBS purposes around broad axes — transit, deposit, temporary stay and processing —, a taxonomy that coexists with the classic structure of the Customs Regulation rather than replacing it.

The practical effect of the transition is that, for now, the rules of Complementary Law 214/2025 apply to IBS/CBS, while the classic federal taxes (II, IPI, PIS/Cofins-Import) continue to be governed by the Customs Regulation. Companies operating under a special regime therefore need to run two logics at once — one for the federal taxes, another for the new taxes — and follow the customs harmonization that still depends on regulation. It is exactly at this crossing between the customs regime and the Reform that the legal reading ceases to be a luxury and becomes a condition of security. The overview of the Reform is in the content dedicated to Complementary Law 214 and, in the Amazonian case, to the Manaus Free Trade Zone.

Governance, non-compliance and where to appeal

A special regime is a benefit under condition — and the condition has an owner: the beneficiary who signs the responsibility undertaking (art. 352). While the regime is in force, the tax obligations remain suspended; if the conditions or the term are not met — the goods do not return abroad, are not exported within the term, are diverted from the purpose —, the consequence is the charge of the suspended taxes, with the legal additions, and, in more serious infractions, the possibility of forfeiture of the goods. That is why the governance of the regime — control of stock, of term and of destination — is not bureaucracy: it is what separates the benefit from the assessment.

And here there is a recent development that many still ignore, with direct impact on the defense. Since Law 14.651/2023, the judgment of the forfeiture of goods, vehicle and currency has come to have a two-tier appeal — before, it was single-instance. The judgment is carried out by CEJUL (Customs Penalties Judgment Center), composed of tax auditors of the Federal Revenue Service (ENAJ at first instance, single-judge; the Appeals Chambers at second), with an appeal term of 20 days. This channel is distinct from CARF, which judges tax credit, not forfeiture — a difference that changes the defense strategy and that tends to surprise those who treated everything as if it fell to CARF.

How the firm acts — from classification to defense

Classification of the regime

The starting point of the TaxUp team is the question that opens this hub: which regime applies to the operation? The diagnosis crosses the purpose of the goods (pass, store, enter for a fixed term, industrialize to export), the desired tax effect (suspension, exemption, refund) and the legal basis of each regime, to reach the right classification — and not the best-known one. It is from this map that the decision comes between, for example, bonded warehouse and depot, or between temporary admission with and without economic use.

Accreditation and structuring

Once the regime is defined, the next front is the accreditation before the Federal Revenue Service and the structuring of governance: the responsibility undertaking, the system of control of stock and of tax credits, the calculation of proportionality in economic use (the 1% per month) and the mapping of terms and extensions. For operations of industrialization to export, the design of drawback or RECOF; for oil and gas, REPETRO.

Reading of the Reform and of valuation

The layer that differentiates the work is the reading of the Tax Reform over the chain: the impact of Complementary Law 214/2025 on the suspension of IBS/CBS, the mismatch between the daily calculation of the new taxes and the monthly one of the federal taxes, and the interaction of the regime with customs valuation and transfer pricing in operations between related parties. It is where the customs regime meets tax law — and where consistency between the two planes avoids an assessment.

Defense and litigation

When the regime is challenged — non-compliance with the term, diversion of purpose, classification or valuation divergence —, the firm conducts the technical defense, from the charge of the suspended taxes to the forfeiture litigation at CEJUL, always with the correct distinction of forum (CEJUL for forfeiture, clearance and tax credit through the proper channel). The Customs Law pillar gathers the neighboring pieces — from Radar/Siscomex and the AEO to the Ex-tariff.