From July 2026, the National Register of Legal Entities (CNPJ) will be alphanumeric, containing letters and numbers. The Federal Revenue published this Wednesday (16) normative instruction which changes the format of company registrations.
In a note, the IRS clarified that the change will not affect current companies, only future registrations. Both the current numbers and check digits will not be changed. According to the Tax Authorities, the change is necessary to guarantee the availability of identification numbers without causing an impact on society or interrupting public policies.
The new CNPJ identification number, informed the Revenue, will have 14 positions. The first eight, with letters and numbers, will identify the root of the new number. The next four, also alphanumeric, will represent the order of establishment. Only the last two positions, which correspond to the check digits, will continue to be numeric.
In the case of check digits, to maintain the numerals in future CNPJ, the numeric and alphanumeric values will be replaced by the decimal value corresponding to the code in the ASCII table (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), used by most of the computer industry. From the ASCII table code, the value 48 will be subtracted. This way, the letter A will be equivalent to 17, B to 18, C to 19 and so on.
