How to reduce the fiscal burden on business?

The rapid dismantling of stalls in Moscow, which has already been dubbed 'the night of the long buckets', has forced experts say that about 15 thousand people could lose their jobs, and in addition it will negatively affect the development of private business in the capital. But yesterday President Putin demanded that access of small and medium-sized enterprises to public procurement should be ensured. One way or another, the small and medium-sized businesses in Russia are in a very difficult situation, and the main problem is excessive taxes.

As the President of the Chamber of Commerce of the Russian Federation, Sergey Katyrin, said, we are talking about reducing the tax burden, "In addition to the tax payments, which are enlisted in the tax code, there is a whole parallel system of non-tax and non-tariffed charges. These charges are determined by individual legislative acts, decisions and the decisions of the various bodies, organizations, ministries and departments, and sometimes they occur at the regional level. For example, the toll on heavy trucks, the fees for water cleaning, for waste disposal."

The Chamber of Commerce counted 50 payments, working at the federal level, all of which have the features of taxes. "These are mandatory payments, they are not refundable, they are usual (paid as a rule, not as some kind of punishment). They have all the features of taxes, but nevertheless they are not applied to the official tax code. They emerge in different sectors, create different fiscal burdens for different industries, in different forms of business. There are port fees, mooring, navigation fees for sailors, and a lot of others. For some they are not quite serious, including for those who are engaged in subsoil use,‘’ Katyrin says.

According to him, this is a very serious amount, "Last year, it was 0.99% of GDP, this year it may exceed 1% of GDP. It is necessary to adopt a law that will determine the establishment of such payments. In the law it is necessary  to prescribe how the base, the frequency of the charges is determined, who is responsible for this and how ... A registry of such tax payments is necessary to make it clear to everyone, including our deputies, when they take these or other legal acts, which actual fiscal burden exists. The register should be managed by the Ministry of Finance. Accordingly non-tax payments may be imposed only for those payments which are on the registry. It is necessary to apply this  from January 1st next year, so everyone has an idea what awaits them in the coming year."

Another part of the problem relates to the need to streamline those who collect the payments: "There is a separate administrator for each payment, and they can, at least, be grouped and some of the group payments can be given to specific departments, for example, all environmental payments can be controlled by the Ministry of Natural Resources. We have already started work in this direction along with the government. And we talked about the fact that some of the payments could be revised, or even reduced. Today, many do not realize how this or that payment has emerged, and how these amounts are commensurate with the issue that they are intended to solve," Sergey Katyrin said.