Self-employed in Kazan to be allowed to conduct seasonal trade
Until now, such sellers were not allowed to bid on the placement of kiosks and stalls, but the actions of the mayor's office were considered a violation
Self-employed in Kazan seem to have got a chance to participate in the auction for the right to place temporary non-stationary retail facilities in the near future. Until now, the city has restricted them in this right, referring to the Regulation on the Organisation and Conduct of Electronic Auctions, where an exhaustive list of participating entities was indicated. The document was approved 9 years ago, and, of course, this category of taxpayers was not mentioned in it. However, attention has been drawn to the problem this year — the infringement of the rights of the self-employed has been highlighted by antimonopoly authorities, and then by the court. Read the details in the material of Realnoe Vremya.
Not allowed to trade
As it became known to Realnoe Vremya, the executive committee of Kazan was obliged to change Resolution No. 7575, which approves the Regulations on the placement of temporary non-stationary retail facilities and catering establishments in the city. The amendments are intended to allow the self-employed to participate in the competition for the installation of seasonal kiosks.
The mayor's office motivated the refusal to allow the citizens working under the special tax regime and paying the self-employment tax to electronic auctions for the sale of places for summer trade by the resolution adopted back in 2013.
The document specifies the list of business entities to participate in the auctions. However, there is no category of self-employed in this list, although citizens in this status appeared in Russia 3 years ago, and it was Tatarstan that started implementing the federal pilot project.
For example, in 2019, an experiment on testing the special tax regime “Self-employment tax” was launched in four regions of Russia, including our republic. Later, the practice was extended to the whole country, but it seems that Kazan officials still do not see entrepreneurs as self-employed — at least, regulations have not been changed for them.
According to one of the auction protocols, last June, the commission of the organiser of the auction decided that the application of the self-employed, I.R. Sayfullin, for the right to place a sup board rental and the sale of sports equipment in the summer season on the territory near Lake Lebyazhye does not meet “the requirements set out in the auction documentation, due to the lack of requirements for the self-employed, as participants of electronic auctions for the right to place non-stationary commercial objects on the territory of parks and squares of Kazan”.
In violation of a number of federal laws
The fact that the mayor's office does not allow entrepreneurs with the status of self-employed to sell places for seasonal trade in Kazan was revealed following the results of a comprehensive audit of compliance with the law during the bidding process. A number of violations of the federal law “On Protection of Competition” were revealed. The antimonopoly authorities sent a warning to the capital's executive committee demanding amendments to the document on the procedure for placing seasonal retail outlets. Sixty days were allotted for the execution of the order.
But the demand was never fulfilled, a case was initiated in the Federal Antimonopoly Service, and then the executive committee appealed to the Arbitration Court of the Republic of Tatarstan with a demand to recognise the decision of the antimonopoly authority as illegal. However, after studying all materials of the case, the arbitration rejected the city's claim.
“The position of the Executive Committee of Kazan on the legality of the non-admission of self-employed citizens to auctions for the right to place seasonal non-stationary retail facilities and catering facilities also directly contradicts the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 204 dated 7 May, 2018. In this case, not only favourable conditions for the implementation of activities by this category of taxpayers are not provided, but competition from the self-employed is significantly limited," the court decision says.
The next meeting of the commission of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, which deals with the case of the executive committee of Kazan and the self-employed, was supposed to take place earlier last week, but it was postponed to September.
More than 5 million self-employed Russians in three years
Meanwhile, the number of self-employed working in Kazan constantly grows. The Mayor's Office reports on this with pride every year. So, according to the data announced at the business Monday in the Kazan City Hall in June of this year, over 5 months of 2022, entrepreneurs with the status of self-employed have increased by almost 9 thousand compared to the same period of 2021 — in general, their number has reached almost 67 thousand. Thanks to their entrepreneurial activity, from January to April of this year, the city treasury was replenished by almost 94 million rubles.
Experiments on the introduction of a self-employment tax in Russia started in 2019 for a period of 10 years. Its first participants were Moscow, Moscow Oblast, Kaluga Oblast and Tatarstan, and today it operates in all 8 federal districts of the country. If in June 2021 there were 2,4 million people on the territory of the Russian Federation, then today, according to the Federal Tax Service, their number already amounts to 5,4 million entrepreneurs. Of these, about 204 thousand self-employed are registered in Tatarstan — this is the largest figure in the Volga Federal District.
The law allowing the self-employed to participate in public procurement was signed by the president of Russia at the end of 2020. According to the document, such citizens began to receive preferences on a par with small and medium-sized businesses — these are mandatory quotas for purchases, a shortened payment period for goods and services, participation in partnership programmes. The only exceptions are contracts worth more than 2,4 million rubles, and those which execution requires the involvement of several employees of the company.