| Deputies may cancel cash registers for small businesses Cash registers may soon disappear from the shelves of small shops, hairdressers, car service centers and markets. The State Duma is ready to consider amendments to the Tax Code that exempt entrepreneurs working on imputed taxes from the obligation to use cash register equipment during the current session. Tax officials are against the adoption of the amendments, assuring that private entrepreneurs will lose the disciplinary factor, and consumers, in the absence of a receipt, will not be able to prove their rights if they were sold a low-quality product.
Theoretically, a small business today can operate on three taxation systems: a general one, a simplified one (if the enterprise’s annual income does not exceed 15 million rubles) and a rather burdensome imputed tax system (when tax is paid based on estimated income). But if an entrepreneur can choose between the general system or the “simplified” system, then the “imputation” is, in fact, forced. Each region has the right to establish its own list of activities subject to imputed tax. As a rule, kiosks, mobile counters, trade in markets, sales of fuels and lubricants, and various services to the population are transferred to “imputation” from the transportation of passengers by “Gazelles” to workshops for the manufacture of sliding wardrobes.
This autumn has turned out to be very fruitful in all regions for the inclusion of new types of activities in the “imputation” - this is how the regions are trying to replenish the treasury in the light of the new financial obligations that fall on them as a result of the budget reform. Across the country, from January 1, 2005, the basic profitability of all types of activities falling under the unified tax on imputed income (UTI) increases by one and a half times. In Moscow, outdoor advertising was transferred to UTII, and in the Moscow region, parking lots and car services. The Federal Tax Service also spoke in favor of strengthening payer discipline by distributing a letter explaining that entrepreneurs who own mobile retail outlets must re-register these outlets with the tax office each time they move to another administrative region.
Deputies intend to adopt amendments that free the “imputed” people from at least part of the tax torment, cash registers and accounting. The developers of the amendments believe that a cash register is nonsense when the actual volume of revenue is not taken into account for tax purposes. And the abandonment of accounting for small businesses was repeatedly proclaimed by government officials in conversations about simplifying the conditions for doing business, but this promise remained in the air.
Experts, however, have mixed views on the abolition of cash registers for small businesses. According to the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Valery Draganov, “people will be less afraid of starting their own business if they don’t have to bother with reporting and setting up cash registers.” He is also supported by his colleague from the budget committee, Andrei Makarov. According to Mr. Makarov, the expansion of the use of imputed taxation is not a normal phenomenon; the state thereby shows that it cannot cope with tax control. And if it is impossible to completely abolish the imputation, it is worth simplifying the rules of the game as much as possible.
Tax officials are quite skeptical about the abolition of cash registers. “We are now demanding the installation of cash registers not out of spite, but in order to keep statistics,” the public relations department of the Federal Tax Service explained to Vremya Novostey. It will be inconvenient for you, the consumers, if you do not receive a cash receipt, the tax service said. Although the amendments state that the buyer must be given a receipt confirming the purchase of a product or service, in practice, in conflict situations, only the presence of a cash receipt is a decisive argument for replacing goods of inadequate quality. And if you can still somehow negotiate with auto mechanics who didn’t fix the car and didn’t issue a receipt so that they can fix it, then returning a pair of shoes to the store that have not served the warranty period without a receipt will be, at a minimum, problematic.
The Law “On the Protection of Consumer Rights”, however, says in this regard that the absence of a cash receipt does not relieve the seller of responsibility, but today’s realities are such that this can only be proven in court and nothing else. Without a receipt, with unfounded threats to bombard all possible authorities with complaints, you can only get money back from the most faint-hearted seller.
Tax officials predict the most problems for those who buy clothes, shoes and equipment in small shops. Moreover, troubles can threaten not only those who make economical purchases in pavilions in covered markets - from market traders and market demand. Owners of shops renting premises in prestigious large shopping centers can also work on imputation. But imagine what to do if the minibus driver did not give you a receipt, and you had an accident, say skeptics in the Department of Tax and Customs Tariff Policy of the Ministry of Finance. Nobody will pay you compulsory insurance. Irina SKLYAROVA |
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