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Government proposal also plans to double the number of employees that individual micro-entrepreneurs can hire, and political articulation has already begun in the Chamber of Deputies
The federal government has broadly defined what the new revenue limit will be for classification as an MEI (Individual Micro-entrepreneur). According to the Minister of Planning and Budget, Bruno Moretti, the new ceiling should be between R$ 130,000 and R$ 140,000 per year — an amount that corresponds, according to the ministry itself, to the replacement of the accumulated inflation since the last update of the category, carried out in 2022.
The MEI is the simplified tax regime intended for small entrepreneurs who operate individually, without partners, and who earn within an annual limit pre-established by law. Created to formalize self-employed workers and facilitate access to benefits such as retirement, sick leave, and issuance of invoices, the category has become, over the past few years, one of the most relevant entry points for the formalization of small businesses in Brazil — which makes any change in its revenue ceiling a measure with a direct impact on millions of workers.
Since the last update in 2022, the revenue limit of the category has remained frozen, even with the accumulated inflation in the following years eroding the purchasing power of the current ceiling. This mismatch between the nominal value of the limit and the real inflation is precisely what the new government proposal seeks to correct, according to the team from the Ministry of Planning.
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According to Moretti, the change should not occur all at once. “We are working here with the perspective of updating this ceiling to a level between R$ 130,000 and R$ 140,000, which is roughly the replacement of inflation in the period. And this will be done gradually between 2027 and 2028,” said the minister, in an interview with the program Bom Dia, Ministro, from EBC. The information was released on June 26, 2026, by the portal ND Mais.
Proposal also expands the number of employees allowed per micro-entrepreneur
In addition to the adjustment in the revenue cap, the proposal from the Ministry of Planning includes another significant change for the category: the increase in the maximum number of employees that individual micro-entrepreneurs can hire, which would go from one to two employees. Currently, this limitation is one of the main criticisms made by representative entities of the sector, which point out the reduced number of allowed hires as an obstacle to the natural growth of small businesses that have already surpassed the initial phase of operation.
According to the minister, this update meets a historical demand of the sector and was formulated with care to respect the current fiscal and budgetary rules. “We will update the number of employees that the MEI can hire. Today, they can only hire one. The expectation is for one more hire,” explained Moretti.
In this sense, the combination of the cap adjustment and the increase in hiring capacity is seen by the government as a way to modernize the MEI regime without compromising the balance of public accounts — since the update of the revenue limit, according to the economic team, only restores the real value lost to inflation over the past years, without representing an expansion beyond what was originally planned for the category.
Still, it is important to highlight that the possibility of hiring a second employee does not automatically mean that the micro-entrepreneur will cease to be an MEI. The proposal maintains the original logic of the regime — tax and bureaucratic simplification for small businesses — only expanding the operational margin for those who have already formalized their activity within this modality.
Political articulation already advances in the Chamber of Deputies
The processing of the proposal has also begun to gain political traction. According to ND Mais, Minister José Guimarães met with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Motta (Republicans-PB), and the Minister of Planning, Bruno Moretti, to align the next steps of the legislative process. The meeting reinforces that, although the cap has already been publicly signaled by the government, the final definition of the text and its voting schedule still depend on political negotiation within the National Congress.
According to Motta, the text should go through a special committee before being brought to a vote in the plenary. According to the president of the Chamber, the central challenge of the proposal is to reconcile two objectives that may seem competing: “We are seeking a text that ensures fiscal balance and meets the needs of micro-entrepreneurs,” stated Motta. The statement well summarizes the tension that usually accompanies this type of proposal: on one side, the pressure to modernize rules considered outdated; on the other, the need to avoid negative impacts on public accounts at a time of heightened attention to the fiscal balance of the country.
On the other hand, the discussion about the MEI ceiling does not start from scratch. The deputies are already analyzing, in parallel, the Complementary Bill (PLP) 108, of 2021, which was previously processed by the Federal Senate. This specific project advocates for an even higher ceiling increase — also set at R$ 130,000 — in addition to proposing additional changes to the rules of the Simples Nacional, a tax regime that covers micro and small businesses in general, as well as the MEI itself. According to ND Mais, the expectation is that both proposals, the government’s and the one already being processed in Congress, will continue to move forward together.
This convergence between the two legislative initiatives can, according to industry analysts, accelerate the approval of the measure, as it avoids duplicating debates on similar topics in different fronts of Congress. However, the merging of proposals can also increase the complexity of political negotiation, since each text carries specific interests from different parliamentary groups and economic sectors interested in the reform of the Simples Nacional rules as a whole.
Even so, the final outcome of the proposal will depend on the progress of negotiations between the Executive and the Legislative in the coming months. Therefore, although the value of the new ceiling has already been indicated by the Minister of Planning, the definitive details on deadlines, transition rules, and possible adjustments to the legislative text still need to be debated during the processing in the Chamber of Deputies — a stage that, according to the government itself, is essential to ensure that the change is approved without compromising the country’s fiscal balance. For the millions of micro-entrepreneurs awaiting the ceiling update, the next chapter of this discussion is expected to unfold precisely behind the scenes of the special committee that will analyze the text before its vote in plenary.
