🇧🇷 Registry15 Oct 2024
Brazil's company tax number becomes alphanumeric for new registrations from July 2026
Brazil's Federal Revenue Service (Receita Federal) announced in October 2024, through Normative Instruction RFB no. 2,229/2024, that the national company registration number (CNPJ) will include letters as well as numbers for new registrations from July 2026. Existing CNPJs do not change, and both formats remain valid. Systems that store or validate CNPJs need to accept letters.
The CNPJ identifies every Brazilian company and branch for tax and registry purposes. The Receita Federal changed its format to avoid running out of numbers.
What changed
- The CNPJ keeps 14 positions. The first 12 (the eight-character root and the four-character branch number) can contain capital letters as well as digits. The last two check digits stay numeric.
- The check digits are still calculated by modulus 11, with letters converted to values first.
- Only new registrations get the new format, from July 2026. Existing CNPJs stay valid and companies don't need to update anything.
- A new branch of a company with a numeric CNPJ can receive letters in its branch number.
What to do
Check that entity management, ERP, invoicing and banking systems accept letters in CNPJ fields and validate the new check-digit rule.