| Deputies are ready to exempt small businesses from using cash registers The persistent requests of small entrepreneurs to remove from them the obligation to issue cash receipts to customers seem to have been heard. Contrary to the government's position, Russian legislators are ready to support the proposal to abolish the use of cash registers for small businesses. On Tuesday, the State Duma tax subcommittee recommended that the House approve a bill that would exempt imputed income tax payers from using cash registers.
Every year it becomes more and more difficult for entrepreneurs to maintain cash register machines, since this equipment is constantly becoming more expensive, and it has to be updated more and more often. To operate legally, the cash register must be included in the register, that is, registered. Today, cash registers manufactured no later than April 1, 2003 are suitable for use. Meanwhile, the need for information collected by fiscal authorities from cash registers is not at all obvious if the entrepreneur operates under the imputed tax regime. According to the author of the bill, deputy Boris Pastukhov, “the income on which this tax is paid is imputed to the taxpayer, and the actual amount of revenue received by an organization or individual entrepreneur is no longer taken into account for taxation.”
The adoption of the law will not entail negative consequences in the field of consumer protection, Mr. Pastukhov assures, because according to the requirements of the Civil Code, a retail purchase and sale agreement is considered concluded in proper form from the moment the seller issues to the buyer not only a cash receipt or sales receipt, but also any other document confirming payment for the goods. We are not going to release entrepreneurs from the obligation to issue receipts, coupons and other receipts to customers, he says.
However, Finance Ministry officials do not seem ready to agree with such a liberal approach. “There is no point in asking entrepreneurs whether cash registers need to be abolished,” said Mikhail Motorin, head of the Department of Tax and Customs Tariff Policy of the Ministry of Finance, at a subcommittee meeting. “All of them, naturally, will say that it is necessary, but we must proceed from interests of the state, which is obliged to monitor the circulation of cash. How will we calculate the basic profitability coefficient, if not on the basis of data taken from cash registers?”
“Do you know how elections differ from a social survey?” Oksana Dmitrieva, a member of the budget committee, asked him in response. “Elections are the most expensive way to find out public opinion, and you at the Ministry of Finance chose the most expensive option for calculating basic profitability.”
Mr. Motorin couldn’t find what to answer. But Mr. Pastukhov’s argument that entrepreneurs are required to keep accounting, the data of which can also be used for control and for the necessary calculations, was countered with the words: “Yes, these will be black holes!” It is not known what these entrepreneurs are doing there; “imputation” will need to be abolished altogether; if cash registers are abolished, unaccounted cash will flood into the market, the official is sure.
According to Pyotr Shchelishch, a State Duma deputy and concurrently the chairman of the Russian Consumer Union, the issue price for entrepreneurs today is 20 thousand rubles. for the purchase of a new device (it has to be changed at least once every two years) plus an annual 800 rubles. for service. For comparison: the amount of the single tax on imputed income (UTII) for a catering enterprise is on average about 30 thousand rubles, so cash registers actually become a second tax, the cost of which entrepreneurs are forced to include in the price of goods and services. To simplify the passage of the bill, the chairman of the tax committee, Natalya Burykina, proposed supplementing the document with an amendment that would place the decision on the issue of cash registers for imputations under the jurisdiction of the regions, so that local parliaments could independently decide whether to give entrepreneurs an indulgence or levy the full severity from them.
In tandem with the bill on the abolition of cash registers for entrepreneurs working on UTII, there may also be a draft law that clarifies the use of cash registers when selling newspapers, magazines and books from mobile trays. Today, the law says that if newspapers and magazines are sold in stationary kiosks, then there is no need to install cash registers there. However, regarding the use (or non-use) of cash registers when selling press from mobile counters and trays, the law does not say anything. For now, such merchants are not required to install cash registers, but inspectors can do this if they really want to. To remove this contradiction, the law on the use of cash register equipment is planned to be supplemented with an amendment to exempt the sale of press and books from trays from the use of cash register machines due to its “socially significant function.” Irina SKLYAROVA |
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