5 of the 11 legislative proposals on business franchising pending in Congress concern taxes

The open databases of the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate record 38 legislative proposals on business franchising introduced from 1987 to 2026, counting only once a proposal that went through both houses. As of October 30, 2026, 11 were pending, 23 had been archived or closed without becoming law and 4 had been enacted into law. Only two of those enacted have franchising as their subject, bill PL 318/1991, which gave rise to Law 8.955/1994, and bill PL 4386/2012, which gave rise to Law 13.966/2019. The other two, Complementary Law 56/1987 and Complementary Law 157/2016, deal with ISS (municipal service tax) and mention franchising among other services. By topic, the Franchise Law and contract (15) and taxation (11) account for 26 proposals, and 8 were introduced after the publication of Law 13.966/2019.

Of the 11 pending proposals, 10 are in the Chamber and 1 in the Senate. Five of them concern taxes, four on ISS and one on PIS/Pasep and Cofins (federal contributions levied on revenue). Complementary bill PLP 163/2020 removes the tax on the franchise contract from municipal jurisdiction, PLP 127/2024 excludes subitem 17.08, "Franquia (franchising)", from the list annexed to Complementary Law 116/2003, and PLP 191/2024 adds to Law 13.966/2019 a provision that the tax does not apply to the periodic remuneration. Under the contract topic, only bill PL 3948/2025 is pending, which limits sublease rent to the amount paid by the franchisor to the property owner, a subject also addressed by Senate bill PLS 273/2001 and by bill PL 6080/2009, both archived.

Complementary Law 214/2025, which establishes IBS and CBS (the value-added taxes on goods and services created by the tax reform), does not contain the Portuguese terms for franchise, franchisee or franchisor, nor the word franchising, in the consolidated text published by the Presidency (Planalto) and consulted on October 30, 2026. Article 3º, II, b, includes in the concept of supply the licensing and assignment of intangible assets, including rights, and Article 4º, § 2º, III, treats licensing, concession and assignment as onerous transactions, without reference to the franchise contract. In the Senate, four amendments to PLP 68/2024 with franchising in their description sought a rate reduction, the exclusion of royalties from the tax base or a presumed credit calculated on payroll, and all four are recorded as declared moot. Constitutional Amendment 132/2023, Article 22, II, a, repeals in 2033 Article 156, III, of the Constitution, the provision on which ISS is based. The observatory records the texts and does not assess the merits of the proposals.

Postal franchising, governed by Law 11.668/2008, is counted separately, with 17 proposals, 2 of them pending. The term microfranchise does not appear in the abstract or in the indexing of any proposal in the two databases.

How we calculate

We read the Chamber's annual proposal files from 1985 to 2026 and the Senate's annual lists of cases for the same period, searching for the Portuguese terms for franchise, franchisee, franchisor and microfranchise, and for the word franchising, in the abstract, in the detailed abstract and in the indexing, in addition to the term search in the open data of both houses. This produced 363 candidate records, reviewed one by one. Other senses of the Portuguese word were discarded, such as baggage allowance, insurance deductible, data allowance, health plan deductible and free postage, as were amendments and committee reports. The full text was checked for pending proposals whose link to franchising did not appear in the abstract.

The unit of count is the legislative proposal, so a bill and its number in the reviewing house count once, as do a renumbered bill, and a provisional measure together with its conversion bill. The year is that of introduction in the house of origin. The status comes from the open data of each house on the date of access. The 19 requests, recommendations and similar acts on the subject were counted separately and are not included in the total. The link column indicates whether franchising is the subject of the proposal or appears in a provision or in the indexing of a broader text. Names of legislators and parties are not published.

Calculated on November 8, 2026. Method version 1.0. Sample: 38 proposals from 1987 to 2026 in both houses, plus 17 on postal franchising counted separately; status as of October 30, 2026.

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