The development of the tourism industry in Russia is becoming a priority today. Tourism gives an impetus to the development of 53 sectors of the economy, and encourages the development of small and medium-sized businesses. One job in tourism creates about five jobs in corresponding spheres. The number of hotels has doubled since the Soviet period. There were 7 thousand hotels in the RSFSR, today there are about 16 thousand. 400 thousand people are involved in the hotel business. However, tourists who try to book private apartments in a resort city or in St.-Petersburg, for example, sometimes get into a difficult situation. When the host of the apartment gets the payment on his credit card, he disappears – his phone number is unavailable, his email doesn’t exist. Crimea has found a solution to how to fight the problem and attract money to the budget.
Owners of private houses and apartments who provide tourists with accommodation without attracting employees, are called own-account citizens. Such businesses are popular not only in Crimea or St.-Petersburg, but also the Krasnodar Territory, Khakassia, other regions. The people who welcome tourists do not register their status or pay taxes or insurance fees to non-budget funds. This negatively influences the budget revenues and safety of the services provided.
The head of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, thinks that “the government’s goal is to simplify the organization and provision of business by citizens who don’t intend to employ workers or register their status as a businessman. A solution to the problem could be simplification of the current taxation system, which is required by the Tax Code for individual businessmen. A patent for own-account citizens should include a certain price, a fixed duration, and a clear mechanism of its purchase.”
Crimea has positive experience of involvement of own-account citizens in the tax system. Last year, 2633 houses where rooms are provided for short-term stays were involved in the tax system through issuing such patents. However, the volume of payments in the form of taxation was only 9 million rubles in 2014.
Every 18th adult resident of Crimea is involved in the tourism sphere directly; every 6th family receives revenues from providing services in the sphere.
There are 4500 mini-hotels and 14 thousand apartment letters on the peninsula today. “People are ready to pay reasonable taxes to the state for providing tourists with services; but they are afraid of bureaucratic difficulties in organizing and building the business. There should measures of influence on dishonest individuals who evade even the special system of taxation. Such measures should be in amendments to the Code of Administrative Crimes,” Aksenov thinks.
However, it is unclear how Russian resorts would receive guests without the private sector. The specificity of the tourism sphere in Crimea and Krasnodar Territory requires a clear seasonal character of tourism. Three-four months are intensive in a year; and there is low demand in the rest of the year. “That’s why owners of tourist businesses cannot provide their employees (room maids, bartenders, waiters, cleaners, and all other staff of hotels, summer cafés and restaurants and camps) with work all-year-round,” Aksenov admits.
In the past, the majority of seasonal jobs were taken by those who came from the Ukrainian regions. Today there are stricter demands on a foreign worker to get a job in Crimea, and there is a serious gap in the service staff market. For example, Ukrainian citizens must pass exams in the Russian language, history and Russian legislative foundations. But the majority of them speak Russian as fluently as Crimea’s residents.
Crimea hopes that the Ukrainians will be permitted to work in its resorts, as there are many Ukrainian professionals who need a job. They intend to establish a united center for working with migrants. It will stimulate the Ukrainians who are you in demand on the Russian labour market to sign long-term contracts; it will also encourage the inflow of labour migrants from Ukraine, who move to Crimea for permanent residence, increase tax revenues, and fill job vacancies.
There is also an ideological factor in the idea. Crimea is sure that employment of Ukrainian citizens will show in practice that the peninsula is a stable and comfortable region for living and working, primarily for the Ukrainian citizens who will go there to work or to spend vacations.
