Leasing with Residual Calculator

How leasing with residual value works

Think of a financial lease as a long-term rental that comes with the right to buy the asset at the end for a price you agreed to up front (in Brazil this is the VRG, or Valor Residual Garantido). What the monthly payment really covers is the gap between the asset's price (after any down payment) and that residual, plus interest on top: PMT = (PV − D − VRG/(1+i)^n) · i / (1 − (1+i)^(−n)). Push the VRG up and your monthly payment shrinks, but you owe a bigger lump sum when the contract ends.

Take a car worth R$ 60,000, nothing down, a VRG of R$ 12,000, over 36 months at 1.5% per month. The monthly payment lands around R$ 1,675. By the end the lessee has paid roughly R$ 60,300 in installments plus R$ 12,000 at maturity. Compare that with a CDC loan, which would amortize the whole R$ 60,000 across the same term at similar rates and leave no residual to deal with later.

Brazilian context

The rules come from Law 6.099/1974 and BCB Resolution 2.309/1996. For years people fought in court over diluted VRG, the part paid inside each monthly installment, until STJ Súmula 293 (2004) settled the question: paying it that way does not turn the lease into an outright sale, so the tax treatment holds. Why bother with leasing at all? Companies get to deduct the payments as an operating expense and keep the asset off the balance sheet, at least until IFRS 16 changed how that worked for accounting from 2019 on.

FAQ

Leasing or CDC for a car? For most individuals, CDC tends to be simpler and gives you more room to maneuver. Leasing earns its keep with companies chasing deductibility, and with cars you already plan to trade in once the term is up, since you just hand the car back instead of exercising the VRG.

Can I sell the asset during the lease? No. Until the VRG is paid, the lessor is still the legal owner. You can settle early, though the discount usually covers future interest only (Resolution BCB 4.292/2013 applies).

What happens if the asset is worth less than VRG at the end? The lessee can simply walk away from the purchase option and return the asset, and the lessor eats the difference. That is exactly why a high VRG can come back to bite the leasing company when markets are falling.