Source: PEGN - Small Businesses Large Businesses - 23/07/2009

Through the Internet, in half an hour, the worker can leave informality and earn the right to retirement, competing in the market by adhering to the new Individual Entrepreneur law.

In the last few weeks, the manicure Elisabete José da Silva has spent some sleepless nights, thinking about the future. Insomnia happens because, at 52, Bete, as she is known, has seen her income shrink and has been unable to contribute to Social Security for a long time. which postpones your retirement plan. After working as a maid, seamstress and saleswoman in boutiques in São Paulo, Bete stopped to take stock of her professional life and was disappointed.

Despite working since the age of 14, he has not had 12 years of employment and contributions to the INSS. Working in the informal sector for several years, the manicurist finds it difficult to contribute to the expenses of the house where he lives with his mother and still pay a private health plan, which costs him R $ 58 per month. She works in a small beauty salon in the Jaguaré neighborhood, in São Paulo, where she gets an average of R $ 380 per month. Bete had never heard of the Individual Entrepreneur Law. When he learned about the advantages of the new legislation, which comes into force as of July 1, his expression was one of relief: “Wow, this ends the biggest nightmare of my life”, By lowering the required contribution amount so that if the professional is entitled to retirement by Social Security, the Individual Entrepreneur Law will lift a burden from the shoulders of thousands of Brazilians.

They are manicurists, gardeners, housekeepers, street vendors and other hardworkers who work informally and are unable to earn enough to pay the bills and, at the same time, collect, as freelancers, the minimum amount necessary for Social Security coffers. Today, to be entitled to retirement for a period of contribution, regardless of age, the self-employed person must contribute at least R $ 93,00 (or 20% of the minimum wage).

As of July, professionals who register under the new legal figure of the individual entrepreneur will be able to collect R $ 51,15 from Social Security plus R $ 1 fixed ICMS, if they are traders or linked to industrial activity. If you are a service provider, like Elisabete, you will collect the same R $ 51,15 plus R $ 5 as ISS. The advance is not only in cost reduction for the professional who works for himself.

By registering on an internet portal created specifically for this purpose, he generates, without much bureaucracy, a CNPJ number and is entitled, in addition to social security benefits, such as maternity leave and sickness benefits, among others, to compete as microentrepreneur in public tenders to become a supplier to states and municipalities.

The Individual Entrepreneur Law applies to every professional with an income of a maximum of R $ 3 thousand per month, or R $ 36 thousand per year. Some categories were not included, such as providers of intellectual services, information technology or hiring of labor. “We realized that the general law of micro and small companies, when regulated, remained complex and cumbersome for very small entrepreneurs, who did not have the scale to pay an accountant, for example.

Now, with the updates to the law, it gains strength to reach those who were left out ”, explains Bruno Quick, manager of the Public Policy Unit at Sebrae Nacional. Many are still out and will now be able to enter under this new social umbrella. The government expects that 1,1 million professionals will be formalized by 2010 under the new legal framework.

Qualifying professionals will also have access to credit lines at more competitive terms, offered by major banks such as Banco do Brasil, Banco do Nordeste and Caixa.

According to Bruno Quick, private banks like Bradesco and HSBC already develop specific products to reach these people on favorable terms. All Sebrae posts will be ready to guide those interested in filling out the registration form.

In addition to this conventional service, Sebrae will set up a caravan to travel around the periphery of 300 municipalities, with support from Banco do Brasil, in a massive effort to reach where the people are. “We want to get close to people and facilitate the formalization process,” says Quick. “Our goal is not to raise money, but to include these people in the formality so that we can have more information about them,” José Pimentel, Minister of Social Security, told Agência Sebrae.

The program has a partnership with the Federal Revenue Service, the Ministry of Development, Industry and Commerce and the National Federation of Accounting Service Companies (Fenacom).

The engagement of city halls will be essential to publicize the benefit, evaluates the Sebrae manager. "For the policy to be successful, mayors need to get involved, i because they are the ones who regulate the public space".

In São Paulo, at the end of June, the state government mobilized all 645 3,2 mayors in a meeting at the Palácio dos Bandeirantes to boost adhesions to the Individual Entrepreneur. With 10 million informal workers, the State of São Paulo intends to remove 2010% of this contingent from the shadow by the end of 320, or XNUMX thousand people.