Nothing happens the month you cross it. That is the useful thing to know first, because people imagine a penalty and there isn’t one. What the ceiling does is end your entitlement to lump-sum taxation and move you onto business books — and the date you cross decides whether that transition lands in July of this year or January of next, which is a difference of about six months of preparation time.
So the ceiling is not a cliff. It is a scheduling problem, and the only way to get hurt by it is to notice late.
Checked on 2 September 2026.
The number, and the other number people confuse it with
The paušal limit is 6,000,000 RSD of turnover in a calendar year. Above that, the right to lump-sum taxation ends.
The VAT threshold is 8,000,000 RSD of turnover in the previous 12 months. Above that, you are registering for VAT.
These are two different limits with two different consequences and two different measurement periods — one is a calendar year, the other is a rolling twelve months. The paušal limit arrives first, and crossing it does not make you a VAT payer. People collapse the two into “the eight million limit” constantly, usually because they read a VAT article. Keep them separate in your head; they will be separate on your calendar.
The timing rule, which is the whole post
Under the transition rule:
- Cross the ceiling in the first half of the year — by 30 June — and the obligation to keep business books starts on 1 July of that same year.
- Cross it in the second half of the year and the obligation starts on 1 January of the following year.
Read that twice if you invoice unevenly. A large invoice landing on 28 June and the same invoice landing on 3 July put you in two different worlds: one gives you days to arrange bookkeeping, the other gives you the rest of the year.
I am not suggesting you move an invoice. I am suggesting you know which side of the line you are on before the client asks when to pay, because “the second week of July suits me” is a legitimate answer to a legitimate question, and knowing why you are giving it is the entire value of this page.
How to see it coming
Your KPO book — knjiga o ostvarenom prometu — is the running record of turnover you are already required to keep as a paušalac. That book is the early-warning system, and it only works if you maintain it as you go rather than reconstructing it in a panic.
Two habits worth having from your first invoice:
Keep a running annual total, not just a list. The KPO is a log; the number that matters is the cumulative one against 6,000,000. Put the running total in a column and look at it monthly.
Watch the exchange rate on foreign invoices. If your clients pay in euros, your dinar turnover is not something you control precisely. The same billed work can produce a different dinar figure depending on when it is converted. This is not a reason to try to time anything — this site does not give currency advice and will not start — but it is a reason to keep margin between your plan and the ceiling rather than aiming to land just under it.
Count everything that is turnover. The ceiling is on turnover from the activity, not on what reached your personal account after costs. A paušalac has no deductions to net off; the gross is the number.
What actually changes when you go onto books
The regime you move to is Model B — the same preduzetnik, taxed on real profit, keeping real books. Practically:
- You get a knjigovođa, and it stops being optional. Model B is monthly bookkeeping with a monthly relationship. This is a permanent recurring cost.
- Your expenses start to count. This is the compensation. Under paušal your equipment, premises and subcontracting bought you nothing at tax time; under Model B they come off before tax.
- Lična zarada becomes available. You can elect to pay yourself a formal personal salary from the business, which changes how contributions are computed. The election runs through ePorezi and the deadline is 15 December for the year starting 1 January. It is not filed annually — once made it stands until you notify that you are stopping. Paušalci cannot use it; there is no profit figure for it to sit on. When real expenses beat paušal is the arithmetic.
- Your bill starts tracking your income. Which cuts both ways: a bad year is now a smaller bill, where paušal charged you the same in a bad year as a good one.
That last point is worth sitting with, because it reframes the whole thing. Paušal is a bet that your income will be higher than the municipal formula assumes. Once your income is genuinely large, the bet stops being obviously good, and the transition you were dreading may not be a downgrade at all.
The six-week version, if you have already crossed
If you look at your KPO today and find you are over, in order:
- Establish the date you crossed, not the month you noticed. That date decides whether books start on 1 July or 1 January.
- Engage a knjigovođa now. Not when the obligation starts. They need to set up the opening position, and someone who has been given a fortnight will charge you like it.
- Assemble your cost documentation from the start of the period. Under paušal you may have been casual about receipts, because they bought you nothing. Under Model B they do. Anything you cannot evidence, you cannot deduct.
- Do not stop invoicing or start refusing work to get back under a limit you have already crossed. The ceiling is measured on the year; you cannot un-cross it, and turning down revenue to avoid bookkeeping is paying more than the bookkeeping costs.
- Check the VAT threshold separately, on its own rolling twelve-month measurement. It is a different question and it may or may not be close.
The rule that is being argued about, and is not law
Business associations are pushing to raise the paušal limit from 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 RSD. As of 2 September 2026 that is a request, not legislation. The ceiling is six million.
I mention it because you will meet the number in circulation and it will look authoritative, and because someone planning a year of invoicing against eight million on the strength of a news item would be planning against a limit that does not exist. If it is enacted it will be enacted in the Službeni glasnik, and every accountant in the country will say so on the same day. Until then, six.
What the incumbents will not tell you
Almost everything published about this limit is written by someone who would like to sell you the bookkeeping that starts when you cross it, which is why the framing is usually “the danger of exceeding the limit.”
There is no danger. There is a date, a transition, and a set of expenses that suddenly become deductible. If your business has grown past six million dinars a year, the correct emotional response is not alarm about the paperwork. It is to run the Model B arithmetic properly and find out whether you should have moved earlier — the work status decision, priced sets out the whole comparison, and the answer for a business with real costs is frequently not paušal at all.
The one genuine trap on this page is not the ceiling. It is the tenure coefficient underneath it: a paušalac’s base steps up over the first 36 months of registration regardless of income, so the bill rises on a schedule that has nothing to do with the business. People planning against the ceiling often have not noticed that the other number is moving too.