Facilitate the activities of entrepreneurs

Regular meeting of the Council for the Development of Small and Medium Business took place at the site of the Ministry of Economic Development last week. One of the issues discussed in its course concerned the problem of carrying out inspections by various kinds of controlling bodies. The question is multifaceted, there are planned and unscheduled inspections. There was a moratorium for routine inspections several years. Nevertheless, according to written applications of citizens, public organizations, legal entities, checks that are off-schedule are carried out.

At present, it so happens that economic agents, in the form of legal entities, are afraid of inspections. Both – violating the current legislation, and not violating. Usually the period being checked is three years. If the infringement was three years ago, financial sanctions, penalties often can exceed the size of the administrative fine for this or that violation. In some cases, penalties are incommensurable with the circulating assets of economic entities. They can close after paying a fine. In this respect, we need to seek a "golden mean" by changing the current legislation in this part.

The second problem that accompanies unscheduled inspections is that inspectors duplicate the functions of other departments during the audit. At the same time, the personnel of the audited legal entities are distracted, and their work in some cases is practically paralyzed, the entrepreneurs incur huge losses. After such inspections, it is very difficult for them to return to the market or to achieve the turnovers that were before the control measures. In this part, you need to look for a balance. It is absolutely clear that dishonest businessmen should be checked, and they should be held responsible for the offenses they committed in the sphere of tax legislation. If the economic agent is respectable, pays all taxes, but for some reason made a mistake, in such situations, in my opinion, the state should be more loyal than it is now in practice.

This is a global issue, therefore, during the meeting of the Council for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Business, it was determined that each monitoring agency should conduct additional analysis in order to level out the excesses in the implementation of control measures.

The situation with the implementation of control measures for individual entrepreneurs is completely different. Diligent individual entrepreneurs are not afraid of inspections. Therefore, we need to answer the question: "Why are legal entities afraid of inspections, and those working under the patent are not?" Having disassembled the reasons, we must exclude the administrative barrier that frightens the heads of economic entities in anticipation of inspections. Obviously, fear of any control measure does not contribute to the development of entrepreneurship in the form of a legal entity, does not lead to improvement of the investment climate in the republic.

It is very important to create for good legal entities such conditions under which the implementation of their entrepreneurial activities would be as convenient and comfortable as possible, without regard for the careless official, who suddenly and "for some unknown reason" decided to "very diligently" check this or that organization.

I am sure that by creating such conditions, we will already have a growth in business activity in the short term and, as a result, an increase in the number of legal entities that carry out business activities.

Alexander KORSHUNOV, Chairman of the Committee of the Supreme Council

on Economic Policy, Budget and Finance.