Article
Data about small and medium-sized businesses will be placed on the register

Lately in Russia great efforts are put for small and medium-sized businesses support. Information agency Credinform has already prepared several publications related to this topic in 2016: in January "Monitoring of small and medium-size enterprises support"; April "What are the small and medium enterprises waiting from the State?"; and May "New limit values for income from business activities".

Despite taken measures, it is early to call business conditions favorable. According to the data of the National social organization «Opora Rossii», about 17 mln people work in this category of enterprises officially, among them 30% are individual entrepreneurs (IE) and about 70% work on small and medium enterprises (SME). However, SME interest in the gross domestic product structure is only 20%. At the same time, as a result of efforts made lately, about 40% of purchase for needs of the government authorities and government-owned corporations operating according the 44 and 223 Federal Laws, draw up contracts with small and medium business. Total transactions volume achieved 28 bln RUB. Difficulties in access to the information about purchase restrain from the increase in purchase volume. Development of the electronic register of SME suppliers aimed to solve this problem and will operate since August 1, 2016.

Insertion of SME in the register will be carried out by the Federal Tax Service (FTS). Reason for placing on the register will be data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (EGRUL) and the Unified State Register of Individual Entrepreneurs (EGRIP), and also data provided by IE and SME about average number of employees for the previous year, income records and other information.

For listing on the register IE and SME should correspond to the imposed for small and medium-sized businesses requirements: annual turnover should not exceed 120 mln RUB for micro-enterprises, 800 mln RUB – for small enterprises and 2 bln RUB for medium enterprises. Average number of employees should not exceed 15 people for micro-enterprises, 100 people for small enterprises and 250 people for medium enterprises.

Data will be placed on the register at free access during 5 years since publication date. Information in the register is supposed to be updated every month. Among changes will be current removal from the register of IE and SME that lost such status. In case of pretensions from enterprises and entrepreneurs, they will have to confirm their status of small and medium business in the tax authorities or in a judicial proceeding.

As expected, use of the register will help to simplify the process of SME participation in purchase and receiving of support of the Government. Earlier enterprises needed to provide corresponding certificates to confirm the correspondence to the criteria of small and medium business and IE, and now listing on the register is sufficient.

You can estimate novation by learning the List of small businesses and socially-oriented NPO (non-profit organizations) as grant recipients in the RF. This list contains 64 520 companies. Access to the list is open for subscribers of the Information and analytical system Globas-i.

Article
Ensuring transparency of information and new registers

Among the risks of business activities the experts of the Information agency Credinform single out a so-called information risk. It is evidenced in the result of legal restrictions on the access to information about business entities that complicates complete verification of counterparties for reliability and integrity.

Such restriction is introduced by federal laws «On Commercial Secrets» (№93-FZ from 2004) and «On personal data» (№152 from 2006). The first one regulates the relations connected with the establishment, change and termination of the regime of commercial secret in regard to information. At the same time the Article 5 defines the information that cannot be a commercial secret. The second law regulates the relations connected with the processing of personal data using automation devices.

However, there is a group of federal laws, defining general availability of information, which includes, for example, data contained in the public registers, as well as other well-known data and information, the access to which is not restricted. In addition, commercial secret regime cannot be set up in regard to accounting (financial) statement. This group conventionally includes the following federal laws: «On state registration of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs» (№129-FZ from 2001), «On Accounting» (№402-FZ from 2011), «On Information, information technologies and the protection of information» (№149- FZ from 2006).

As a part of the maintenance of open data policy and in interests of business the state seeks to reach a certain degree of information transparency. In 2016 it was manifested itself in the following facts:

  • since January 1, 2016 an updated version of the Unified information register of procurement has begun operating, which provides, in cooperation with other information systems, full information, including plans-graphics of procurement, terms of contracts’ projects, participants, as well as the exchange of electronic documents between them;
  • in May 2016 Russia signed an agreement on automatic exchange of information, according to which taxmen may receive information related to investment income, sale of shares, bank account balance, interest on deposits and bonds of Russian citizens abroad;
  • the order of the Federal Tax Service of Russia entered into force, regulating the procedure of the validity check of the information contained in EGRUL, and giving the right to make an entry in the register on the unreliability of information;
  • the tax secrecy regime was canceled from a part of information available to a tax authority, in particular: from the average number of employees, from paid sums of taxes and fees, the amounts of income and expenses according to the accounting (financial) statement, the amounts of arrears and debt on penalties and fines;
  • since the beginning of 2017 the federal law will enter into force, according to which a legal entity is required to have information about its beneficial owners and to and to submit it to competent authorities.

It may be added that the decisions on the rules of procedure of following registers are made: the State register of credit consumer cooperatives, the Unified Register of SRO in the financial market, the Unified Register of issued certificates of conformity and registered declarations of conformity, the Register of notifications about pledges of movable property, the Unified State Registry of real estate; decisions on the establishment of the Register of the heads of local administrations, the Register of travel agencies.

It is expected that it will be opened an access to information on the attested powers of attorney in the register of notarial acts Unified information system of notaries; companies will disclose the interim consolidated statement in the public access systems; banks will receive new black lists of clients, which have canceled running contracts for services; the FTS of the RF will begin to create the Register of sources of income and the same Register of debts on obligatory payments, the Unified State Register of the civil status registration.

It should be noted that a large share of the information contained in the sources and registers mentioned above is possible to find in a centralized source – in the Information and analytical system Globas-i®.