The Federal Tax Service will recount the self-employed – Kommersant FM

The Federal Tax Service will be able to monitor the work of the Council of Digital Platforms. At least, the Ministry of Labor proposes to give the Federal Tax Service such a function, Vedomosti writes. We are talking about regulating platform employment, that is, the work of private specialists who receive orders through services or aggregators, for example, Avito Work or the largest marketplaces. Currently, the Federal Tax Service tracks the income and outstanding taxes of self-employed people on 59 online platforms.

Expanding the functionality of the service will help more effectively coordinate the activities of labor market players, notes Alexander Norovyatkin, head of the communications department at Solar Staff: “The platform itself is large-scale, because it, in fact, includes the largest players, one way or another connected with platform employment, This includes YouDo, Yandex, and Wildberries. This includes working with couriers, taxi drivers, and other so-called gig workers. Therefore, the platform itself is very significant for the market.

It is proposed to transfer the management initiative to the Federal Tax Service; this seems to be a logical decision, because historically it has developed that the tax service has already come into contact with this market in one way or another. Of course, the Federal Tax Service is interested in developing self-employment; many participants in platform employment are in fact the main driver of the development of this tax regime in general. Plus, the Federal Tax Service already maintains a register of electronic platforms, for example, our company is also included in it. The Ministry of Labor is historically associated with full employment, that is, with what is commonly called office work.

The creation of such a council assumes that Avito, Yandex, Ozon, Wildberries and other brands are actively participating in this economy and will drive changes and offer some solutions. I think that if they do not set the agenda themselves, the Federal Tax Service can put forward bills that it primarily needs. This is, rather, not about tightening the rules, but about creating large benefits for any tax status.

If for some reason the Federal Tax Service understands that it wants to drive the development of individual entrepreneurs, it will be able to simply change policies and push the market, for example, to ensure that there are more individual entrepreneurs in platform employment rather than self-employed people.”

In February 2024, the European Union agreed on several bills to combat fictitious self-employment and protect the rights of workers on online platforms. Most of them are taxi drivers and ready-to-eat food delivery people. The Russian authorities also want to adopt this practice, although the discussion of the document is still dragging on.

Its adoption will help whitewash the market for the self-employed, believes lawyer Sergei Nikitenkov: “The single platform will be under control, including full control over the financial resource, the movement of funds in any form, be it cryptocurrency or some kind of non-cash funds. Perhaps other licensing services will be involved: in the criminal direction, in the administrative direction, perhaps the judicial system.

This is being done so that when we see a change in life that requires a change in legislation, all interested parties will simultaneously create a regulatory framework that will allow us to openly and publicly regulate these processes now, at the moment of the birth of digital labor platforms. Then everyone will understand the rules of interaction between employee and employer, which will entail an increase in employment.”

Since the spring of 2023, the State Duma has been discussing the transfer of the right to collect taxes to marketplaces; this proposal was made by the Ministry of Labor. The idea was to provide electronic platforms with the functions of a tax agent. The head of Wildberries, Tatyana Bakalchuk, supported the initiative in December. In an interview with RBC, she stated that this “costs the company virtually nothing” except for the development of the system.

Online platforms will be forced to spend money on creating the necessary technologies, Chairman of the Council for the Development of Electronic Commerce of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Alexey Fedorov does not rule out: “The platforms have already developed all the mechanisms to pay taxes for the self-employed themselves, but almost every citizen has the opportunity register as a self-employed person in a banking application, automatically receive all tax notifications from the Federal Tax Service and pay them yourself, in just two clicks.

The platform itself will do the same thing, making the life of a self-employed citizen easier; even if the person has not registered as a self-employed person, the platform will be able to pay for him all the taxes that he would have incurred. This will be the most important breakthrough when a citizen will interact seamlessly with the Federal Tax Service, and this will require minimal effort from the platforms. For them, in fact, nothing changes; they will incur almost no costs, while the federal budget will receive quite large tax revenues.

The development of this system will cost marketplaces several tens of billions of rubles, at a minimum, maybe the amount will be closer to a hundred billion rubles. Let me remind you that the two main platforms, Ozon and Wildberries, have their own banks, and, of course, this will be extremely beneficial for them, because the money will be collected and accumulated in their own banks for some time. These are very large sums that these banks will be able to earn.”

According to the Federal Tax Service, there are over 9 million self-employed people in Russia. At the same time, according to the Center for Strategic Research, for most of them such work is the only source of income, so they are excluded from the social and pension insurance system.

---

Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.

Elena Tyuleneva