| CNPJ | |
| Full Name: | Cadastro Nacional de Pessoas Jurídicas |
| Subject: | Legal entities |
| Organization: | Federal Revenue of Brazil |
| Digits: | 14 |
| Example: | 00.623.904/0001-73 |
The Brazilian National Registry of Legal Entities (Portuguese: Cadastro Nacional de Pessoas Jurídicas, “CNPJ”) is a nationwide registry of corporations, partnerships, foundations, investment funds, and other legal entities, created and maintained by the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service (Receita Federal do Brasil, “RFB”). Currently, all companies are automatically enrolled in the system upon incorporation. The system uses a fourteen-digit number, which is made up of an eight-digit unique identifier, a four-digit branch identifier, and two check digits. The first number (even though it does not belong to the first company to be enrolled), 00.000.000/0001-91, has been assigned to Banco do Brasil, the country's largest public bank.
The CNPJ has become the most important number for commercial transactions between companies due to its ubiquity and official status. The RFB maintains a publicly accessible website where any CNPJ number can be checked; thus, for many purposes, it is now possible to discard all other non-essential information about a company and replace it with the CNPJ number. This is true, for instance, of product labels: instead of including the full name and address of the company manufacturing or selling a product, merchants include only the CNPJ, which can be easily found online and checked against the RFB's official database.
The Federal Government, interested in simplifying its registration procedures on companies appears in the mid-90's, but it was only in 1998, through the SRF Normative Instruction No. 27, that the CNPJ (short for Cadastro Nacional da Pessoa Jurídica in Portuguese, or '
The CNPJ must be informed on any invoice of any company, as well as on the packaging of any industrialized product.
According to SEBRAE (Serviço Brasileiro de Apoio às Micro e Pequenas Empresas in Portuguese, or 'Brazilian Service to Support Micro and Small Enterprises), there are more than 19.2 million active companies in Brazil, almost 6 million situated in São Paulo --, more than 4.8 million being 'Individual Microentrepreneur' (MEI), 'Micro-enterprise' (Microempresas - ME) and/or 'Small Business' (Empresas de Pequeno Porte - EPP).[4]
Data from IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística in Portuguese, or Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics') shows 4.937,861 million companies in 2018, an increase of 11.7% compared to 2007,[5] but represents a drop of 1.8%, if compared to 2017.[6]
Among the more than 52.2 million employed persons, 45.5 million (87.0%) were salary workers and 6.8 million (13.0%) were in the condition of partner or ownership. The average monthly salary was R$2.952,87, equivalent to 3.1 minimum wages.
Also according to the IBGE, of the companies founded in the country in 2008, only 25.3% were still standing in 2018, 70% closed their doors in less than 10 years and only 25.3% were still standing ten years later.[7]
In practice, about one in five companies went out of business in less than a year of operation — or 18.5% of the total.Different cases of CNPJ-related frauds are recorded every year in Brazil. The most common types are:
Consulting a CNPJ is free, and can be done directly through the Federal Revenue system. The service is called "Emissão de Comprovante de Inscrição e de Situação Cadastral"