If you freelance in Brazil under the MEI (Microempreendedor Individual), your next invoice could push you over a limit the government is about to move.
In 2026, the Lula government sent a bill to Congress that would raise the MEI annual gross revenue cap from R$81,000 to R$140,000 — a 73% increase. For a designer in São Paulo, a programmer in Recife, or a manicure freelancer in Belo Horizonte, that shift decides whether you stay in the simplest tax regime in Latin America or must migrate to Simples Nacional with different ledgers, rates, and obligations.
What MEI Is and Why the Cap Matters
MEI is Brazil's ultra-simplified regime for a solo entrepreneur without partners and with at most one employee. You pay a fixed monthly DAS (Documento de Arrecadação do Simples Nacional) that bundles INSS, ICMS or ISS, and a small federal component — often R$70–R$80 per month — regardless of revenue, up to the cap. You issue NFS-e, you keep minimal bookkeeping, and you file an annual DASN.
Cross the cap and you are desenquadrado — excluded from MEI. The migration is not just a higher tax; it is a different accounting world: monthly PGDAS, different annexes in Simples Nacional, pro-labore vs. distribuição de lucros, and more complex payroll if you have that one employee.
The cap has been R$81,000 since 2018. Inflation and real growth have pushed tens of thousands of MEIs over it without any real income gain, forcing them to migrate for nominal reasons.
What the 2026 Bill Proposes
- Cap: R$81,000 → R$140,000 annual gross revenue. A freelancer who invoices R$10,000 per month (R$120,000 per year) stays MEI under the new bill but would have been forced out under the old cap.
- DAS value: The fixed monthly DAS would remain, adjusted for the minimum wage. The simplicity of one fixed payment stays, at least for now.
- Employee limit: One employee at the minimum wage remains; a second employee would still trigger Simples Nacional.
- Transition: The bill's effective date is the next January 1 after publication, with prorated limits for the year of publication if it passes mid-year. A freelancer who already migrated in early 2026 because they crossed R$81,000 would not automatically re-enter MEI without a request.
Who Should Stay MEI vs. Move Anyway
Even if you stay eligible at R$120,000, staying MEI is not always the best choice.
Stay MEI when: Revenue is under R$140,000, you have no partners, you have at most one employee, your customers don't require nota with ICMS/ICMS credits, and the fixed DAS plus low INSS is cheaper than Simples Nacional's effective rate (often 6–15% depending on annex and factor R).
Migrate to Simples Nacional when: You need more than one employee, you sell goods with ICMS where the purchaser values the credit, your factor R optimization (28% of revenue in payroll) gives you a lower Annex III rate, or your revenue is trending toward R$200,000+ where the MEI limit will bind again soon and the Simples Nacional history matters.
Model both: MEI's fixed annual cost vs. Simples Nacional's projected PGDAS + pro-labore INSS + contador monthly fee. A R$130,000 freelancer under MEI pays roughly R$900–R$1,000 per year in DAS; under Simples Nacional in Annex V, without factor R, the cost can be R$8,000–R$12,000.
Bookkeeping Until the Law Passes
The bill is not law until Congress approves and Lula sanctions. Until then, the cap is still R$81,000. Keep this ledger discipline:
- Monthly revenue tracker: Gross invoices issued, by month, with a running 12-month total. Set an alert at R$70,000 and R$78,000.
- Annual DASN on time: Even if the cap rises, the annual declaration is still due.
- Inflation adjustment: If you price in reais and also receive in dollars, track revenue in reais at the exchange rate on invoice date — exchange gains don't exempt you from the cap.
- Cross-border freelancers: A Brazilian tax resident freelancer invoicing a US company in dollars still counts the revenue toward the MEI cap in reais; non-resident freelancers selling into Brazil without a Brazilian CNPJ are outside MEI entirely.
Keep Your Finances Organized From Day One
A cap measured in gross revenue is unforgiving of messy invoicing. Every real issued is a real counted, and the difference between staying MEI and forced migration is often a single late invoice's timing.
Beancount.io keeps that count in plain text — every NFS-e as a transaction, every month's gross as a report, and every cap threshold as a budget alert. Get started for free and make the reform a runway, not a surprise.