Getting my CPF remotely from the US
A child of Brazilians, I found myself with the country’s passport but without
the omnipresent CPF number (Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas), which functions kind
of like a social security number, except you use it for just about everything in
Brazil from opening bank and phone accounts to buying clothes at the mall.
Naturally, after a few trips back in adulthood I was ready to get it figured
out.
After a fair bit of trial and error, I managed to get mine issued without being
in the country, using only online resources. I catalogued what I learned in the
process.
Here’s what I needed:
- A scan of my passport
- A picture of me holding my passport opened to the photo page, with all the
text legible
- My birth certificate. I don’t think it needs to be a Brazilian birth
certificate, but the crucial bit is it needs to have your parent names on
it. Apparently most identification in Brazil is done by cross referencing you
and your parents together?
- Proof that I’ve fulfilled my military obligations. In my case the proof was a
little document I got from the consulate that I was excused from military
service. I’m not certain this is necessary, but I had it and submitted it with
my requests. This isn’t relevant for minors.
- Proof of current (US) residence. I used an internet bill.
- My Título do Eleitor (voter registration) number. Also not relevant for
minors. I didn’t have this either, so I needed to get it first. This is very
much required! My first request was denied for not having it.
First, getting the Título do Eleitor. I used the
self-service form here
under “Tire seu Título”. A couple notes:
- I included the military obligation doc here even though it wasn’t clear
whether it was required.
- There was a field for CPF which I obviously didn’t have yet, but I was able to
leave it blank.
- There was no preset option for Passport as a form of identification. I used
the “other ID” option and my passport number, and explained in the notes (just
before submitting) that the form of ID used was my passport.
- I needed to pay a fine, amounting to less than a dollar, for not having
registered before 19 years old. The payment portal accepted Pix, which
requires a local bank account (which requires a CPF to open) or credit card.
Tragically the credit card option also had a mandatory CPF field!
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to do this without depending on another
Brazilian to help me, so I asked my dad to pay with Pix.I now think it might
be possible to pay with Pix as a foreigner through Xoom, but the service
charges a chunky fee.
- It took a couple days for my request to be approved, but they never sent me an
email indicating that it was (even though I got emails when previous attempts
were denied). I checked the status in the self-service portal to find out that
it was ready. Then I queried my number, again though a different function in
the portal.
Now that I had that, I was ready to request my CPF. This was actually pretty
straightforward, if somewhat bizarre since the process involves sending an email
with sensitive doccuments as attachments… but I guess that’s how they do it in
Brazil! You can see the instructions on
this official explainer page.
There’s not much to note here, except that the instructions have you print an
automatically filled form and sign it, but my e-signature was also accepted.
Hopefully these notes can be useful to any other Brazilians raised outside the
US!
