Who can be self-employed
In the context of an unstable geopolitical situation and the imposition of sanctions, many Russians are thinking about additional gains. Part-time job approves request to work “Avito Rabota” and GigAnt services: 66% of respondents said they plan to look for a part-time job within the next three months.
“Demand for part-time jobs has doubled. Everyone is looking for additional employment: both digital workers and those associated with physical labor,” says Artem Kumpel, Managing Director of Avito Rabota.
Such a concept as “self-employment” appeared in Russia five years ago, and the new status was introduced in several pilot regions, and by 2020 the practice has spread to all regions of Russia. According to the Federal Tax Service (FTS), published at the end of January this year, 4 million self-employed people are officially registered in the country.
As Mikhail Kirichenko, COO and co-founder of Jump.Finance explains, the self-employed are people who work without involving employees, who independently find customers to sell their goods or services, and pay taxes on the income generated.
In other words, self-employed status allows for the legalization of income for self-employed.
“Any resident of the Russian Federation, including an individual entrepreneur, can become self-employed. The main condition is that he did not hire employees. Applying for self-employment is easy: download and register on your phone with the application My Tax from the Federal Tax Service, and then mark your income and issue checks to customers. Only passport data and TIN are required for registration, ”explained the expert.
At the same time, tax is calculated automatically according to the income entered into the application at the end of each month. Self-employed people are only required to pay their taxes on time.
Speaking of tax rate, it is 4% for cooperation with natural persons and 6% for legal entities. The rates are reduced when the tax cut is taken into account – 3% and 4% respectively.
An important point is that when applying for self-employment, an insurmountable ceiling appears in income – you can earn up to 2.4 million rubles.
Self-employed status is automatically lost if earnings exceed the set amount. There is no way around this: My tax will not allow you to file large amounts. To avoid this, you can switch to individual entrepreneur status and continue your activities, adds Kirichenko.
It is also necessary to consider that there are both pros and cons when deciding to apply for self-employed status.
“The self-employed are not required to pay insurance contributions to the PFR, FFOMS and FSS and are therefore not entitled to sick leave payments, pensions and similar payments. However, the self-employed have the right to make voluntary payments to the Pension Fund to build up their retirement savings,” explains Natalia Skryabina, a member of the Russian Bar Association.
Who cannot be self-employed
Lawyer Skryabina, it is worth remembering that not all areas of activity of the self-employed are available. Therefore, it is not entitled to apply a special tax regime:
– persons selling labeled cuttable goods (tobacco, alcohol, jewellery, etc.);
– persons engaged in the resale of goods not of their own production;
– persons involved in the extraction and (or) sale of minerals;
– persons with employees who have a business relationship or conduct business activities in the interests of another person on the basis of commission agreements, commissions and agency agreements.
“Here it is important to note that the manifestations of labor relations are: the performance of a particular labor function; the personal nature of the work; determination and accounting of working time; fee fixing.
That is, a self-employed person cannot literally own a worker, but the law does not prohibit hiring citizens under civil law contracts to perform certain jobs with a specific result, ”said the author.
Also, self-employed people cannot rent real estate, sell cars or deliver goods without a cash register, Kirichenko said.
In general, other activities not covered by the prohibition can be used by the self-employed. But experts emphasize that medical or security activities, for example, will require a license or the purchase of special premises.
Top 5 Practical Tips for Self-Employed
Mikhail Kirichenko emphasized that an important element of increasing personal productivity, especially for the self-employed, is the competent distribution of working time. That’s why it’s important to focus and track exactly where your time is going during the study period.
“I have identified two areas where it is important to concentrate and where it is important to combine with each other: core activity and self-development along with training. The core activity is what generates income in the here and now, namely the money we live on. Education is your contribution to future earnings in the form of better quality products or services or creating less time. It is necessary to combine these two data aspects as organically as possible,” he said.
If we talk about time, it is very important not to get confused in the daily “operational activities” and to organize your affairs, adds Kirichenko. He recommends setting a rule for yourself that you must abide by every order through the status funnel. This will allow you to tightly control all payments and find bottlenecks in the efficiency of your work.
“For a small number of orders (up to 10 per day), regular Excel is fine. Yes, it is very simple, but simplicity is its strength. If there are more orders or there is a need to organize a loyalty program for a customer, for example, it is worth considering using a CRM system. Fortunately, modern systems are pretty straightforward and straightforward right out of the box for casual users, despite the vast range of customization options for large businesses,” Kirichenko continued.
The expert emphasizes that freelancing is dangerous, blurring the boundaries between personal and professional. To leave, you need to create a separate bank account, correspondence account, work and rest schedule.
“Another good life trick is to enable do not disturb mode on devices. The same thing works here as in the classic private business – when a person tries to do his job well, he spends all his possible time on it, and as a result, he loses resources and, most paradoxically, makes himself and the business worse, ”said the author. expert.
Automate everything possible, another important tip for the self-employed. This applies to receiving payments, exchanging documents, issuing checks. Everything that cannot be automated is transferable. Self-employed people cannot have salaried employees, but self-employed people can work with other self-employed people. This means that simple routine actions that take up a resource can always be delegated, says Kirichenko.
“It is very easy to focus on your core business, especially if you manage social media pages on your own, respond to incoming messages, call couriers, send orders and keep accounts,” he said.