Expansion of the MEI billing ceiling is a priority for parliamentary fronts that, together, have 253 deputies
At the end of last year, leaders of nine parties signed an urgent request for a vote in the House, but the proposal remains in place. Since February, five parliamentarians have asked for the text – whose rapporteur in the Plenary is already defined – to be included in the Agenda. The idea is to increase the offensive for the text to be approved.
MEI’s annual gross revenue limit was last updated in 2018. It went from R$ 60,000 to R$ 81,000. Correcting the ceiling is one of the demands of the category, since the accumulated inflation by the Extended National Consumer Price Index (IPCA) in this period is 34.4%. If it were updated only by inflation since then, the maximum income for an entrepreneur to be classified as MEI should be around R$ 109 thousand.
Marco Antonio Rocha, professor at the Institute of Economics at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), approves the upward revision of what MEIs can earn annually.
“I think the limit could be updated. It is beneficial and, in that sense, the project is correct. We are talking about gross revenue of almost R$ 10 thousand per month. It is not much. (The ceiling) of R$ $81,000 was very outdated. Service inflation was very high, where there are a lot of MEI. A good part of the economy in urban centers is based on individual micro-entrepreneurs”, he evaluates.
The specialist believes that this can bring a series of benefits to the competitiveness of these micro-entrepreneurs, but points out that raising the ceiling produces other indirect effects.
“The problem is that there are a series of loopholes in the form of taxation and in labor legislation that induce what we call pejotization. When we expand this tax limit, there is a beneficial effect in relation to the competitiveness of these micro-enterprises and the generation capacity of employment and income, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, there is the impact that this has on the way large companies are hired. All of this has to be taken into account”.
Prejudice
One of the main arguments of those who defend raising the ceiling is the principle of “tax justice”. Failure to update the limits according to official indices, such as inflation, ends up removing those who were previously intended by law from the regime.
Imagine a hairdresser who had a gross income of BRL 77,000 last year – an average of BRL 6,400 per month. According to the IBGE, inflation in 2022 was 5.79%. If this entrepreneur wants to correct the services provided by inflation so as not to lose money this year and, in addition, just maintain last year’s service flow, she will have earned BRL 81,400 at the end of 2023, exceeding the MEI ceiling and being forced to migrate to the microenterprise.
In practice, even if it serves the same number of people as last year and does not have an increase in real revenue, it will have exceeded the MEI limit.
FCS coordinator, federal deputy Domingos Sávio (PL-MG), explains that these workers are harmed by the non-revision of the ceiling, which encourages irregularities.
“The MEI soon needs to either stop working, because otherwise it exceeds, or it has to look for illicit ways, or produce without issuing a note or borrow a note from another colleague and that is not what we want for the micro-enterprise. We we want microenterprises to also be able to grow. Now, with a lagged billing ceiling, this segment is being severely harmed and the Brazilian economy is being harmed”, he says.
Member of the FPE, federal deputy Jorge Goetten (PL-SC) says that the non-correction of values results in evasion by micro-entrepreneurs and also discourages the continuation of the company throughout the year, which impacts the economy .
“It’s not only important, but urgent. This ceiling should even be retroactive, because there are many companies that have already lost the possibility of continuing in the Simples regime because they broke the ceiling. And even more, not just evading. There are many companies that stop sell there in the fourth quarter, because otherwise the ceiling will burst. You have to change the ceiling to real values. All that’s left is for the Chamber to vote and I have no doubt that fellow deputies will approve”, he bets.
Changes
There have been several proposals over the last few years for the MEI billing limit to be extended. The one that won the most was the complementary bill 108/2021, authored by Senator Jayme Campos (União–MT).
In addition to expanding the MEI ceiling to R$ 130,000, the text approved in the Senate allows the individual micro-entrepreneur to have up to two employees and not just one, as currently.
In the Chamber of Deputies, the project was approved with amendments by the Finance and Taxation (CFT) and Constitution and Justice (CCJ) committees. At the CFT, the rapporteur, federal deputy Marco Bertaiolli (PSD-SP), proposed that the ceiling be corrected considering the accumulated inflation since 2006.
In that year, the figure of MEI did not yet exist, but there was the “individual micro-entrepreneur” – “corresponding legal figure” – whose annual gross revenue limit was R$ 60,000. By correcting this amount for inflation, the parliamentarian calculated that the ceiling for MEI classification should be R$ 144,913.41. In addition, the text of the bill provides for the automatic correction of this limit annually, in accordance with the IPCA.
History
Created fifteen years ago through Complementary Law 128/2008, the MEI was a bet by the government to reduce informality in the labor market and, at the same time, guarantee an increase in tax collection.
This is because although it has simplified conditions for paying taxes, the individual micro-entrepreneur pays monthly taxes such as ISS (for service providers), ICMS (for those in commerce, industry or transport) and also contributes to the INSS.
Economist Ciro de Avelar says that the increase in the ceiling for the classification of individual micro-entrepreneurs contributes to the collection of municipalities. “City halls can greatly benefit from this reframing. Especially because, unlike the Union, states and municipalities cannot issue bonds to finance themselves. It is necessary to seek a tax restructuring to offer these public services to the population. And there must be supervision for this increase to be used for the benefit of the population”.
According to Data Sebrae, the country has more than 12 million MEIs.
DOMINGOS SÁVIO (PL-MG): Increasing the billing limit for MEI is “priority number 1”
By Brasil 61
