Brazil: Government announces ‘Descomplica Trabalhista’ programme to simplify labour regulation

Source: Lexology
Author: Juliana Nunes

On 22 October, the Ministry of Economy and Special Bureau for Labour and Social Security jointly published order no. 76/2020, with the aim of reducing barriers to free enterprise, and simplifying and eliminating some bureaucracy for employers. The announcement came within the context of last year’s Economic Freedom law no. 13.874/19 and President Bolsonaro’s government platform.

The main change is a new schedule for the implementation of e-Social (the simplified system for registering labor, social-security, and tax obligations). The latest phase of e-Social implementation has been postponed and the requirements simplified. For companies with domestic revenues beyond BRL 78 million, the filing of data and events related to occupational health and safety (SST, as in the Brazilian acronym) will only be mandatory from 8 June 2021 and beyond.

The requirements have also been simplified so that information already known does not have to be resubmitted, to reduce the number of notifiable events and to improve the overall ease of use of the system. Key changes include that:

• The worker will only need to be identified by their CPF, and it’s no longer necessary to include other identification tags such as NIS.
• If any data has been inserted contrary to the system’s “expectations”, it will no longer prevent the submission from being made. Unlike before, an alert will be sent to the user.
• The provision of information to comply with tax and social-security obligations, including FGTS deposits, will be facilitated.

As such, the incidence of fines and penalties for non-submission of information is expected to decrease.

In addition to the above, forty-eight (48) ministerial orders have been cancelled. New health and safety conditions for agribusiness have been introduced.

We expect that in future more ancillary obligations will be replaced by e-Social, to facilitate employers’ compliance with tax, social security and labour obligations.