What do businesses think about the government’s tax idea?

What do businesses think about the government's tax idea?

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The government promised to soften tax laws for business; entrepreneurs, in turn, reacted ambiguously to his ideas. On March 28, the Cabinet of Ministers submitted to the State Duma a bill aimed at reducing the fiscal burden. A significant part of the document is devoted to supporting legal entities. In particular, it is proposed to simplify reporting for some companies, as well as make the tax monitoring mechanism more accessible. It is expected that this will save organizations from unnecessary bureaucratic delays. However, the entrepreneurs themselves, interviewed by Kommersant FM, admitted that they were expecting other measures. What’s changing for business? And what initiatives is he missing? Ivan Khorushevsky sorted it out.

The Cabinet of Ministers has been preparing amendments to tax legislation since the summer of 2023. The changes were partly initiated by the government itself, and partly by President Vladimir Putin, who consistently states the need to reduce the administrative burden on business. One of the most notable proposals in the bill is to eliminate the filing of quarterly returns for companies that have effectively ceased operations. According to Kommersant FM’s interlocutors, the measure concerns mainly beginning entrepreneurs. 80% of them fail to gain a foothold in the market, but no one relieves them of the obligation to report to the fiscal authorities even with a zero balance.

As a result, businessmen find themselves in a difficult situation, noted Sergei Varlamov, managing partner of the Delovoy Farvater law office: “There is virtually no activity, but for some reason people cannot carry out the liquidation procedure. In particular, it is not always easy to have the knowledge or funds to hire lawyers.

As a result, sometimes a situation arises when the owners no longer ran a business, they remember about this six months or a year later, when they see that the company, for which there is no activity, has also been imposed some fines by the Federal Tax Service.

Often the very presence of a fine for failure to submit a declaration, and this is literally several thousand rubles, interferes with other procedures.”

Kommersant FM’s interlocutors assess the government’s proposal positively, but remind us that the so-called empty companies still have obligations to submit zero reports, for example, to Rosstat. And for failure to provide it, the fines are significantly higher – from 20 thousand rubles. up to 70 thousand rubles. So the load, if at all, decreases, then only slightly.

However, this applies to small businesses. The authorities have prepared another measure for medium and large companies – the government wants to make tax monitoring more accessible. It exempts enterprises from on-site inspections; in return, legal entities provide fiscal authorities with online access to their own accounting systems. Now organizations with a turnover of 1 billion rubles or more can switch to this form of control. or 100 million rubles. taxes paid for the year. It is proposed to reduce the thresholds to RUB 800 million. and 80 million rubles.

However, for example, the owner of the Take&Wake coffee shop chain, Alexey Petropolsky, accepted the idea without enthusiasm: “In the monitoring mode, the Federal Tax Service “tells” you who to pay, who not to pay, where to take VAT credit, where not to take it. In addition, every year a business must hire these independent auditors and submit a report on what it has done for the year, what the dynamics are, and so on. But this is more of a load than a relief.

This will simply lead to the fact that commercial, tax and banking secrets will come to naught, and life will only become harder for the entrepreneur, not easier.”

On the other hand, tax monitoring removes the risk of unnecessary claims and additional charges from companies. In any case, for now this mechanism is voluntary. But Kommersant FM’s interlocutors do not rule out that by lowering the thresholds, the government is preparing the ground for turning the system into mandatory. Business did not ask the authorities for all this, complains entrepreneur Natalya Goryachaya: “Entrepreneurs need something else. Small and medium-sized businesses could, in principle, even agree with some kind of increase in taxes, but in return, for at least ten years, don’t change anything and remove tax obligations, which are becoming more and more every year.”

Immediately after his re-election, Vladimir Putin promised business to create a tax system that would be stable for at least six years. But back in 2023, the Ministry of Finance, for example, did not see the point in a progressive personal income tax scale, and is now preparing for its introduction.


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

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