Marina Yardaeva “Cancel and forget”: what will happen to self-employment? 15.01.2025, 08:00

There are currently more than 12 million self-employed people in Russia. Moscow and St. In St. Petersburg, one in four workers already has a special tax regime. Many officials and entrepreneurs fear that this situation will seriously threaten the economy. There is already talk that couriers, taxi drivers and other freelance artists are to blame for the staff shortage. They suggest tightening the screws: increasing taxes, introducing some restrictions. Will they take risks? So what are the general prospects for self-employment in the near future?

For example, Tatarstan Minister of Industry and Trade Oleg Korobchenko came to the fore recently. He called for increasing taxes for the self-employed because they were paying only pennies into the budget; This figure is hundreds of times less than the full-time employees of industrial enterprises. He gave figures there too, but they are so irrelevant to reality (because ordinary Avtovaz employees, of course, do not deduct millions from their salaries), we will act as if we did not see or hear. Let’s focus on general issues, so to speak. The problem, according to the official, is that the labor market is highly skewed due to the combination of different tax regimes, the difference between the working conditions of some and others is unfair, and this creates a bad effect, as you can see. Effect on the mentality of factory workers: they, too, those wolves, no matter how much you feed them, they look towards the forest.

SuperJob founder Alexey Zakharov recently talked about the same thing. They say that we have a lot of free artisans who do not produce anything, but only provide some services that the population does not really need. And right now the real sector is dying painfully: There are not enough qualified workers, engineers, teachers, doctors. “We have a shortage of 500 thousand teachers. But the pizza comes in 15 minutes,” said the entrepreneur. And he very accurately stated that everything about teachers is really very sad for us. And then came the strange offers. They say it would be great to redistribute labor resources. But since no one will sign up for it voluntarily, the most drastic solution is needed: abolish self-employment altogether and forget about it like a bad dream.

Meanwhile, 78% of entrepreneurs would accept such a measure. Exactly many of our businessmen admitted that they do not like self-employment, and moreover, it is like a bone in the throat because employees of their companies are running away for free bread.

Of course, the first reaction here is surprise. Serfdom appears to have been abolished more than 150 years ago. I would also like to remind dear employers that some of them reduce costs and make their employees self-employed. So why are you now complaining that free people are not only disappearing, but are even growing stronger and starting to choose who they cooperate with? Yes, it turned out really bad in some places. There is a real imbalance in the labor market, not a weak one. Yes, maybe we don’t need so many couriers, but we really need teachers. Yes, a tax of 4-6 percent is really very low. If everyone switches to tax, we will have no roads, no schools, no hospitals, no doctors, no teachers. But the situation is actually not as simple as it seems. And simple solutions will not work here.

To see whether shrinking or radically tightening the special tax regime is a bad idea, you need to go back to square one and remember why this regime was introduced in the first place. And they did this certainly not so that the delivery and taxi industries could develop here, but to bring small private traders out of the shadows: mechanics, teachers, home confectioners and hairdressers. And they came out of the darkness. If freelancing is canceled most will return. They will not run to factories to get their salaries, they will stay in their garages and kitchens, they will continue to give lessons via Skype, but they will stop sharing with the state. Okay, some of those promoted will switch to individual entrepreneurship, but the rest will still enter the invisible zone.

It will not be possible to redistribute anyone anywhere. And for many – what a surprise! – and this is not necessary. In 2021, about half of the self-employed combined different tax regimes: They worked somewhere in the state and contributed 4-6% to the budget by working part-time in the same field. Common story: A person works at a school during the day and teaches at night (pizza delivery people are not the real problem in the education sector). Now, maybe there are fewer of them, or the situation has changed significantly: for many, self-employment is the main activity, and part-time work is added somewhere.

It is clear that the employer is annoyed when people start working less. But let him look at the situation from the other side. Maybe it’s because people are still organized according to the Labor Code, they value sick leave and holidays a little more, just because they earn money. When you ban “part-time jobs” a person cannot survive on the salary many employers offer, especially in the public sector. A person will have nothing left to feed his children or repay his loans.

No, minor adjustments can be made. Let’s say the self-employed will be spared a slight tax increase of 2-3%. People where things are going really well. Still, it is better to stay in the legal field: it is easier to find clients, you can work with legal entities. The introduction of pension contributions and sick leave contributions is even more justified. Now this is offered on a voluntary basis as additional opportunities, but I will also provide mandatory regular contributions to the Social Insurance Fund and the Compulsory Health Insurance Fund for those who earn only as self-employed. If registration of sick leave with relevant payments can still be understood as a personal matter for everyone, then for the right to see a clinic or be hospitalized in an ambulance, I think you can pay at least some crumbs, and it is advisable to earn at least a minimum pension, otherwise in our solidarity The system is already in a terrible state – it is not clear who is feeding whom.

It also makes sense to have some restrictions. Starting this year, new criteria for replacing normal employment relationships with self-employment come into force. Now companies cannot cooperate for more than three months with more than 35 self-employed people paying more than 35 thousand rubles each, provided that this is the majority of their income. And good. It’s very true indeed. If you want stability and loyalty of employees, you cannot save on them; If you want something cheaper and simpler, people need to be given their freedom.

Overall, changes need to be made. However, there is no need to cut from the shoulder. The timid experts who say that the self-employment regime can and should be brought closer to the regime of work under an employment contract are right, but they leave all participants in the employment relationship a choice about which opportunities to use and which not. I must add that it is best for the two regimes to move towards each other. It would also be good for people working in organizations to introduce some goodies, such as a hybrid schedule where possible, lower tax rates in some cases, and an increase in the cost of working hours. No, no one will crack. Now it is employers who complain about staff shortages. The problem will not go away on its own. And measures in the spirit of “ban and keep out” no longer work.

The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.

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Source: Gazeta

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