The authorities want to tighten the requirements for benefits so that the self-employed work more

The services of the self-employed are now in demand by approximately half of Russian small and medium-sized businesses, according to data from the Aktion group. At the same time, according to Kommersant, a significant proportion of the self-employed are now formalizing this status in order to have the right to apply for a single benefit for families with children, and de facto do not work for themselves. The amendments, which will tighten self-employment income requirements to access benefits, will “push” them to participate more actively in the labor market, increasing their turnover as self-employed, entering paid work or entering into a social contract.

Almost half of Russian small and medium-sized businesses (48.5%) work with self-employed people, both due to tax preferences and due to the efficiency of such employees. This conclusion can be drawn from the research of the Aktion group for Kommersant. More than 500 companies operating primarily in trade, manufacturing and construction took part in the survey.

In most companies (74.5%), self-employed people perform one-time tasks; in about a quarter of companies, long-term contracts are concluded and extended with them. The majority of respondents (52.5%) said that they work with the self-employed for more than a few months, up to extending contracts for years: approximately every sixth company works with the self-employed for up to a year, and every tenth – for several years. The reason why most companies (53%) are willing to hire self-employed people is the opportunity to save on taxes and fees. However, every third organization (33%) believes that self-employed people work more efficiently than full-time employees and create less burden on the accounting department. More than half of the companies surveyed (51%) value self-employment as a format so much that they admitted that they would rather choose another candidate than fight for a position in the state for a candidate who refuses to register as a PSN payer.

Approximately every 12th company (8.2%) encountered interest from inspection authorities due to work with the self-employed – in particular, they received demands to explain the reasons for concluding such contracts. This is not surprising: 6.5% of respondents said that they hire former employees as self-employed, which is directly prohibited by law – a former employer can enter into an agreement with a former employee as self-employed only two years after his dismissal.

As a result, 4.5% of companies faced demands from the tax service to reclassify a civil contract with a self-employed person into an employment contract, and 2.4% even managed to challenge these requirements.

Let us remind you that now, according to the Federal Tax Service, which the department announced at the end of November, more than 9 million self-employed people are registered in the Russian Federation, who in total have earned 2.9 trillion rubles since 2019. The most popular types of activities among the self-employed are taxi services, repairs, marketing, sales of self-produced products, beauty industry, delivery of goods and rental of apartments. The average bill for a self-employed person is 1.8 thousand rubles. At the same time, a Kommersant source in the department notes, despite the significant increase in the number of self-employed, within this category there are those who earn practically nothing. “We see that as of September of this year, we had more than 4 million people registered as self-employed who earned up to 5 thousand rubles. in year. Such income, of course, does not allow them to be considered full-time workers,” he says.

There may be two reasons for the existence of self-employed people with extremely low incomes. Some workers register themselves as self-employed in order to test the new tax regime, and for some reason subsequently continue to work under an employment contract or GPC agreement. At the same time, as Kommersant previously wrote, the Ministry of Labor discovered that by obtaining self-employed status, many Russians bypass the “zero income” rule and get the opportunity to apply for a unified child benefit, which is due to families with income below a certain threshold (more details see “Kommersant” dated December 1). The amendments that the department proposed to make to the rules for issuing this payment will solve the problem of fictitious employment – social security authorities will consider self-employment as work with a minimum income from it of at least two minimum wages per year (from 2024 – 19.2 thousand rubles).

This, in turn, will “push” some of these self-employed people to take a more active position in the Russian labor market – either by increasing their income from self-employment at least to the required minimum, or by going into employment, or by turning to a social contract that can be used, for example, to open a small business. As a result, employers would likely be able to cover part of their staffing needs, especially when looking for line specialists in areas where high qualifications are not required, such as retail or logistics. Now, let us remind you that the unemployment rate in the Russian Federation again reached a historical minimum and, according to Rosstat, in October of this year amounted to 2.9%.

Anastasia Manuilova