National project "Small and Medium Enterprises and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives"

Finance

Insurance

Consumer market

Energy

Transport

Healthcare

Technologies

Business

Real Estate

Education

Funding source: Mixed

Budget: 481,500,000,000 rubles.

Start year: 2021

Graduation year: 2024

Project status: In progress

Project passport approved: December 24, 2021.

The purpose of the national project of the Russian Federation "Small and medium-sized businesses and support for individual entrepreneurial initiative":

increase in the number of people employed in small and medium-sized businesses, including individual entrepreneurs.

Tasks of the national project of the Russian Federation "Small and Medium Enterprises and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives":

Responsible for the implementation of the national project of the Russian Federation "Small and Medium Enterprises and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives":

Indicators of the national project of the Russian Federation "Small and Medium Enterprises and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives":

The number of people employed in small and medium-sized businesses, including individual entrepreneurs:

Within the framework of the national project "Small and Medium Enterprises and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives", measures have been developed that should increase the share of SMEs in the country's economy to 32.5%.

Active small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a sign of a developed, "vibrant" economy. In developed countries, the SME sector contributes on average almost half of GDP and significantly affects government tax revenues. In addition, small and medium-sized businesses always mean new jobs and, as a rule, actively introduce innovations.

Most countries have been relying on SMEs for more than a decade in a row, creating comfortable conditions for them - government guarantees, subsidies, soft loans and other preferences are available to businesses.

In Russia, the share of SMEs in GDP is now 21.9%, but this figure is rather arbitrary. Difficulties in calculations are associated primarily with the fragility of the existence of small businesses - some of the companies included in the register of SMEs maintained by the Federal Tax Service (FTS) may no longer exist. A more accurate accounting of companies and the measures of state support provided to them will allow maintaining the Unified Register of SMEs - recipients of support. FTS will launch it at the end of December.

The national project includes five federal projects, each of which is aimed at creating favorable conditions for doing business for small enterprises.

One of the tracks is educational programs, according to which 450 thousand people should be trained by 2024. Some of the programs are implemented by the SME Corporation - for example, "Mama-Entrepreneur", "Alphabet of an Entrepreneur", "Financial Support", where students get acquainted with the basics of entrepreneurship.

For exporters, there are programs of the Russian Export Center. As part of the national project, it is planned to increase the share of SME exporters to 10% in non-primary exports by 2024.

Other tasks of the national project are to increase the volume of public procurement from SMEs to 5 trillion rubles, open at least 100 support centers "My Office", and provide financial support to SMEs in the amount of 10 trillion rubles, including through preferential credits. For this, microfinance and guarantee organizations are developing in the regions.

The SME Register will be updated more frequently

According to the new law, which has already laid down on the president's table for signing, the Federal Tax Service will monthly update the data in the register of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs that meet the conditions for classifying small and medium-sized businesses. This is important, since only businesses included in the register are eligible for state support. Thus, entrepreneurs excluded from the register of SMEs within a year on formal grounds will be able to restore their status by submitting the necessary documents to the Federal Tax Service, without waiting for August 10 next year, as provided for by the current version of the law on the development of SMEs.

The register has already been "unscheduled" updated in the spring so that anti-crisis measures reach the widest possible range of companies and individual entrepreneurs.

What will change?

The updated national project on SMEs will contain four federal projects, two of which, according to the Ministry of Economic Development, are completely new - they will concern the creation of a "one window" for business and support for the self-employed. The introduction of transitional tax regimes for growing SMEs is envisaged.

According to the presidential decree, 2021 will be declared the Year of Entrepreneurship. Ironically, it is for this year that new "gifts" have been prepared for small businesses. The last of them was made quite recently: the Ministry of Economic Development announced the indexation of deflator coefficients, as a result of which payments on the unified imputed income tax (UTII), the patent taxation system (PSN) and the trade fee will increase by 4.9% compared to the current year ...

It would seem that 4.9% is not that much. But the fact is that this increase in load will occur along with other processes, which are now almost not talked about. The overall result will be a significant increase in the fiscal burden on small businesses, and instead of the planned growth of small businesses, we will receive a reduction.

Insurance premiums for individual entrepreneurs grow faster than inflation

From 2021, the amount of mandatory contributions of individual entrepreneurs to the Pension Fund and the MHIF will again be increased. The scale of this increase is much higher than the aforementioned 4.9%: contributions to the Pension Fund will grow by 10.5%, and to the MHIF - by as much as 22.4% (ICSI calculations based on Article 430 clause 1 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, discussed in MEDIA). At the same time, not all individual entrepreneurs can set off these amounts when paying their income taxes.

It is assumed that after 2021 the annual increase in contributions for individual entrepreneurs will be discontinued, since these payments will not depend on the minimum wage. But given the general tendencies towards a gradual increase in the tax burden, it is difficult to believe that these amounts will not be indexed according to some other rules, for example, through the same deflators.

And this is not the whole story with insurance premiums, which have already become one of the main types of fiscal burden for Russian business. Each year, according to ICSI calculations based on published data, the threshold amounts are indexed by 10-12%, starting from which the reduced contribution rates are applied. This means that for conscientious payers of contributions who pay high wages to qualified employees, the burden of insurance premiums is growing every year. At the same time, benefits on insurance premiums for small businesses, unfortunately, are available only to certain categories of payers.

It becomes more difficult to apply special tax regimes

One of the most serious changes limiting the use of special modes will be the abolition of UTII from 2021. Now this tax is paid by 2.1 million small businesses, of which 1.8 million are individual entrepreneurs. Thus, about 55% of individual entrepreneurs operating in the country and about 10% of legal entities (small companies) are on UTII. From 2021, they will all face the need to change the tax regime. At the same time, for most of them, the most likely will be the transition to a simplified taxation system (STS), in which the tax will be calculated not from the estimated ("imputed") income, but from actual receipts, which in many cases is equivalent to an increase in the tax burden.

An equally important change will be the ban on the use of UTII and the patent taxation system when trading goods subject to labeling. In 2021, this will fully affect the trade in footwear, medicines, textiles, perfumery products, car tires, etc. Considering that more than half of Russian small businesses work in trade, the changes will affect a significant number of companies and individual entrepreneurs.

The Ministry of Finance plans to introduce restrictions (see below) on a new tax system for “self-employed” - the tax on professional income (NPA). After a fairly successful start of this system in four pilot regions, instead of extending the NAP to all regions of the country, it is proposed to introduce this regime only in “certain constituent entities of the Russian Federation”. Restrictions on the types of activities that the “self-employed” can do are also discussed.

Property taxes continue to rise

The country continues to move to the calculation of property taxes at cadastral value: annually, the lists of objects that are subject to property taxes under the new system are updated and supplemented. There is also a reassessment of the previously conducted cadastral valuation, most often in the direction of its increase. For example, last year the media actively discussed a 20% increase in cadastral value for most retail real estate in Moscow and the Moscow region.