Source: SEGS Portal - 21/05/2012

The cliché “Brazil is an entrepreneurial country”, so propagated by the media, leaves no doubt: entrepreneurship is in fashion. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey, GEM, analyzed the topic in over 80 countries and corroborates this thesis. 

One of the most important points of this study, considered the greatest on entrepreneurial dynamics in the world, is the Entrepreneurship Rate in Initial Stage, TEA, which is the proportion of people aged between 18 and 64 years in charge of new businesses, or that is, with less than 42 months of existence. 

In Brazil, the 2010 TEA was 17,5%, the most significant since the beginning of the survey in the country. This represents that 21,1 million Brazilians were in charge of entrepreneurial activities. 

Another study, by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), released by the Brazilian Institute of Ethics in Competition (Etco), estimated the informality index at 18,3% of the Gross Domestic Product, a value that would have corresponded to R $ 663,4 billion last year . To get an idea of ​​how big this problem is, the underground economy in the country is equivalent to an Argentina. 

In 2003, the production of goods and services not reported to the government deliberately to evade taxes, evade social security contributions, not comply with labor laws and avoid costs arising from compliance with standards represented 21% of GDP; in recent years, the indicator has fallen, but it is far from the international average of 10%. 2009 IBGE data indicate that Brazil had 4.846.639 companies. As of 2009, with the creation of the Individual Microentrepreneur, the process of migration to the formal economy has been accelerating. In 2009 there were just over 77 thousand businesses legalized as MEI. The number rose to 810 thousand in 2010 and 1,7 million the following year. In 2012, the amount already exceeds 2 million. 

Thus, I estimate that there are about 15 million entrepreneurs working in the underground economy. 

The tax authorities have worked hard to fulfill their objectives in order to bring the effective collection of potential closer to increasing the perception of risk and the fiscal presence.

The Public Digital Bookkeeping System project presents a positive proposal to combat unfair competition and rationalize ancillary obligations. 

The first practical project of SPED was the NF-e, started in 2005. Today, covering 800 thousand issuing companies, it enters a second generation (NF-e 2G) that provides for a much more detailed monitoring of the facts that occurred in the life cycle of the digital document. 

Created in 2006, SPED Fiscal will include until 2014 all taxpayers of ICMS and / or IPI, about 1,5 million companies. Most states have, for the time being, opted for the Simples Nacional out of this universe, but there are already strong indications that they will soon be included. 

Sped Contábil, in turn, has absorbed around 150 thousand companies in this digital bookkeeping, since 2007. 

EFD-Contributions, originally called EFD-PIS / Cofins, covered in record time 150 thousand legal entities subject to taxation based on the Real Profit and will include, in 2012, another 1,3 million companies of the Presumed Profit. 

We will also have the Digital Tax Bookkeeping of Social Security and Labor Obligations (EFD-Social), which is part of the Credit Unification Program (Treasury and Social Security). This project, scheduled for 2013, aims to create the digital payroll and will cover even the individual microentrepreneur. Its objective, obviously, is to increase the formalization of employment and social security inclusion. 

In this digital tax ecosystem, which integrates companies and authorities, the existence of an underground economy is becoming increasingly difficult - and expensive. 

It is not by chance that the collection of federal revenues had a real growth, based on the IPCA, of 10,1% in 2011, and the GDP rose only 2,7%. 

Soon we will have most of these entrepreneurs legalized through programs like MEI or Simples Nacional. 

What does not make sense is how many entrepreneurs, managers, consultants and leaders of entities can still disregard this movement towards the corporate “Country of Transparency” and its consequences: legality, corporate governance, use of information technology and, above all, ethical behavior .

Roberto Dias Duarte is a professor, writer and entrepreneur, with an MBA in business administration from Ibmec. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Mastermaq Softwares and author of the “Post-SPED World Survival Manual”, fourth book in the “Big Brother Fiscal” series.