Cargo carriers will have to register themselves and their trucks in a special register

“Kommersant” found out what consequences the regulatory changes planned from March 1, 2025 may have for the Russian road freight transportation market. According to the new rules, commercial carriers will have to register in a special registry, as well as register their trucks. The corresponding bill submitted to the State Duma is designed to combat gray tax evasion schemes, covering 60% of the volume of cargo transportation. But market participants consider the provided requirements to be too lenient, and punishment for their violation, on the contrary, is excessive. Many are concerned about the complexity of integrating the new registry with IT systems, the stability of its operation with a large number of users, and its resistance to hacking.

The creation of a system of access to the road freight transportation market, which began to be formalized in law the other day, has been discussed since the cancellation of licensing, Taras Koval, president of the Association of Transport Experts and Specialists, told Kommersant. But the initiatives were mainly blocked by the Ministry of Economy, the main reason being the creation of an unnecessary administrative burden on carriers, he notes.

The position of the Federal Tax Service changed the situation. “Having begun to pay close attention to the road transport market around 2019, the Federal Tax Service was faced with a gigantic avoidance of VAT and income tax on the part of intermediary companies between cargo owners and carriers who actually transported the cargo,” says Mr. Koval.

The head of the State Duma Committee on Transport, Evgeny Moskvichev, introduced a bill that would force cargo carriers by road to register in a unified electronic register (GosLog), where data on carriers and vehicles is entered, on April 8.

The register takes into account commercial carriers (they receive a fee for the service) and trucks with a maximum weight of over 3.5 tons. Exclusion from the register means termination of the right to transport goods.

Legal entities and individual entrepreneurs in the register must comply with all requirements for maintaining transport in good technical condition, conducting medical examinations of drivers, etc. Self-employed people are allowed to carry out commercial transportation only with vehicles weighing from 2.5 to 3.5 tons. The law is expected to come into force on March 1, 2025.

The explanatory note talks about the lack of proper control over freight transport, where the number of accidents is on the rise, after licensing was canceled in 2009, and the company can simply notify the start of transport activities. But even this requirement is not met: as of April 2, notifications were received only from 46.1 thousand car owners, or less than 20% of the total number of owners; accordingly, control over the activities of 80% of carriers is not carried out.

According to expert estimates, the document says, more than 60% of cargo transportation is carried out under gray schemes by individuals to whom truck owners lease them in order to reduce taxes and evade liability.

More than half – 56.2% of trucks are registered to individuals. The taxes that can be obtained by legalizing cargo transportation are estimated at 450 billion rubles. per year, the explanatory note says.

Players generally support the creation of a registry. The market is fragmented: the share of small companies with a fleet of less than 50 vehicles in the industry exceeds 80%, says Vadim Filatov, head of the Association of Road Freight Carriers and Forwarders. “There are still many players who dump by optimizing taxes and fees,” he notes. “To develop the market, it is necessary to improve the safety of cargo transportation and the transparency of the industry. The creation of a unified register of cargo carriers and the renewal of licensing can help resolve these issues, but it is necessary to avoid additional administrative and financial burden on companies.”

Director for procurement of transport services at FM Logistic in Russia, Eduard Mironov, says that with the advent of electronic consignment notes and waybills, the need for a unified system capable of accurately processing the entire transport flow has become tangible.

However, many market participants note shortcomings in the bill and difficulties associated with its implementation. According to Taras Koval, the basis of the mechanism for introducing admission is taken from the European regulation 1071/2009 and related national regulations of the EU countries.

“But as has often happened in the history of Russian transport jurisprudence, amendments have been made that significantly change the essence of regulation and raise questions about the possibility of the mechanism as a whole,” he notes.

Thus, Mr. Koval clarifies, in most EU countries, any company that is included in the consignment note must receive permission. The European CMR may include two carriers with joint and several liability: the “main” carrier, the holder of the contract of carriage, and the “subsequent” carrier who directly performs the transportation. “Our Civil Code does not imply such a scheme, although many dream about it,” says the expert.

In Germany, a permit is issued for ten years, after which a complete retake of documents occurs; In the proposed project, the admission period is not limited. In EU countries, the person responsible for transportation is required to have professional qualifications; to comply with them, in addition to knowledge of road safety, one must undergo training and pass an exam in law, commercial and financial management of a company, technical standards, technical operation, and so on.

The project refers only to the responsible road safety specialist. The EU strictly defines the criteria for transportation for its own needs, which is not in the draft.

In the EU, unlike the proposed procedure, carrier liability insurance is mandatory. Also, the expert notes, in the EU only individuals can ban motor transport activities; in the Russian document, legal entities are also disqualified. “According to APEC members, the differences described can solve only part of the problems and will not affect the development of the motor transport market,” summarizes Mr. Koval.

Eduard Mironov believes that when developing any new system, it is important to ensure its compatibility with the existing transport management systems (TMS) in each company: “If additional personnel are required to enter data into the new system, process optimization will not be achieved.” As follows from the text of the bill, the vehicle must be assigned to a specific company, explains Delko CEO Sanjar Ashuraliev: “Thus, when registering equipment for rent, carriers will need to enter the vehicle into the database linked to their legal entity. Its effectiveness will also depend on the speed of this process, since lengthy processing is fraught with losses due to downtime.”

“If the bill is adopted in its current form, we will need an additional resource for maintaining the register,” says SOTA Logistic Business Development Director Igor Chernyshev. “At the same time, a large number of users accessing the resource at the same time can, as practice shows, simply “hang” the database data. This doesn’t promise us anything good.” Plus, he emphasizes, “the issue of data protection cannot be discounted.”

Natalya Skorlygina