Tax for sole traders became a third more

Amendments to the decree regulating activities of sole traders include increase of the tax rate by one third for market traders who sell consumer goods without accompanying documents.

BelaPAN has been informed about that by the chairman of the Republican public association Perspektiva Anatoly Shumchanka.

As said by him, on March 13 a meeting of sole traders of Minsk with officials of Lukashenka’s administration was held in Minsk. There representatives of small business where acquainted with the draft of a new decree, changing the existing Decree No.222. After that meeting pictures with the text of the draft law were disseminated in social networks.

Thus, the draft decree reads that individual entrepreneurs who pay a single tax for those who are engaged in retail trade, including the trade in consumer goods, have a right “to transport these goods, sell them in retail facilities in marketing places without documents which confirm their purchase or delivery.”

At the same time, sole traders with goods imported from the countries of the Customs Union without accompanying documents, are to pay value-added tax on importation with a fixed sum. This tax is calculates as “a sum of the single tax without a multiplying factor 2, at quadruple rate”.

As said by Shumchanka, these amendments in general meet the interests of sole traders, with the exception of the taxation base size. “The fact that the authorities are returning to the concept of a single tax payment by businessmen for their right to transport, store and sell goods without accompanying documents meets our interests, we support that. But the rate of the tax should be changed, as the coefficients under the new decree would be impossible to pay for many sole traders, it is to grow by one third,” he noted.

The leader of the association of market traders hopes that before the new decree is rubberstamped, officials are to invite sole traders from provinces to discuss this document, as “Minsk is not the entire Belarus, and it is not right to discuss these issues with Minsk dwellers only, to put it mildly.” “Slonim, Brest, Homel, Mahilyou – many sole traders in these cities are still not working today. And they are to be invited in the first place,” he explained.

Members of Perspektiva believe that the rates of taxes used before July 1, 2014 should be returned, and supposed a double sum of the VAT plus a double single tax would be paid for an opportunity to sell goods without accompanying documents. “In our current conditions we thing that even these rates are high,” Shumchanka added.

He noted with satisfaction that some paragraphs of the resolution passed at the forum of entrepreneurs in Minsk on February 16 are implemented by the authorities. In fact, a moratorium on inspections is observed, the authorities are carrying out negotiations with businessmen. Besides, according to the knowledge of Perspektiva, a meeting of Lukashenka with sole traders is being prepared. It is most likely that it is to take place on March 17 in one of the retail facilities of Minsk.

“Today the government does not have a right to make mistakes. If the president signs a non-viable decree twice, it is to look unbecoming, to put it mildly,” Shumchanka summed up.