Mobile application for self-employed Russians, Android version

The financial site Banki.ru reports that self-employed Russians faced the first account blockings. This is due to the fact that credit organizations "do not always understand how to qualify the activities of citizens." On the one hand, clients open accounts as individuals. On the other hand, they receive payments for their business on their personal cards. At the same time, in the contract for servicing an account it is usually directly prohibited to use the account of a physical person for business activities.

In this case, if you find an order through any freelance exchange and ask the customer to transfer the payment to your bank card - this is a direct violation of the service contract. Previously, banks turned a blind eye to this, but now they have begun to block the accounts of individuals, tax experts say.

“A person opened an account, and as a result, they blocked his account and the card too. At the same time, they cannot open an account as an individual entrepreneur, because for this it is necessary to provide a certificate of registration as an IP. And the self-employed person at the USRIP is not registered, there is a notification procedure there, ”said Sergey Zelenov, head of the tax committee of the Moscow branch of Opora Russia.
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In such a situation it is not entirely clear what freelancers should do. After all, if a person is officially registered as self-employed and wants to accept payment for his services, he will not be able to open a bank account as an IP. And if he opens an account as an individual, then he is not allowed to accept payments on the cards, because this is contrary to the terms of the service contract. There is a gap in the law.

Banki.ru website conducted a survey of banking organizations and found out that they relate to the problem differently. A single approach really does not exist, so that in many banks the risk of blocking the account remains.

Yulia Galuyeva, Deputy Director General for Legal Affairs of Amulex Legal Service, explained in her comments for the publication that the wording of the current legislation does not explicitly state that the operations of the self-employed are business activities. Although this is a logical conclusion and a matter of course, there is no such phrase in the regulations, so freelancers are still in some kind of “gray zone”. Yes, they can officially register as self-employed and pay tax, but from the point of view of banks they are prohibited from engaging in business activities. From the Civil Code it follows that only individual entrepreneurs are engaged in entrepreneurial activity. What, then, do freelancers (self-employed)? Unclear.

Banks easily calculate “suspicious” accounts, because the nature of operations on freelancers' accounts is different from ordinary “physicists”. Self-employed can receive multiple transfers from different individuals and companies.

It is possible that for the bank the best option would be to open special tariff plans for officially registered freelancers, with tariffs slightly higher than the accounts of individuals, but less than those of individual entrepreneurs. But until they appear, blocking customer accounts seems to be not the best solution, because people do not have options on how to solve the problem.

Income tax

The tax on professional income for self-employed came into force on January 1, 2019. From this point on, a citizen operating in test regions (Moscow, Moscow region, Kaluga region and the Republic of Tatarstan) can register as a self-employed person, and instead of the usual personal income tax and social contributions, pay 4% of the income received when working with individuals and 6% when working with legal entities. At the same time, it is not necessary to be registered in these regions - it is enough to prove the actual conduct of activities in the test region.

You can register:

• in the application "My Tax" ,
  
• through a personal account on the tax website,
  
• through the bank.

After confirming the registration and when earning income, you will need to mark this same income in the same application and put checks. The maximum income of the self-employed is limited to 2.4 million rubles. per year (on average, 200 thousand rubles per month).

According to experts, this is the lowest interest rate on income in Russia, and of fixed rates in the world as a whole. That is, working as a self-employed freelancer is much more profitable than as an individual entrepreneur. There are no hidden taxes and fixed fees. If there is no income, then you do not need to pay any taxes. For comparison, in Belarus, under the simplified system of taxation, the IE pays income tax of 5% plus a fixed amount to the social security fund ($ 55 per month), regardless of the amount of income in this month. That is, even with an income of $ 10 per month, a person must pay 5% and $ 55.

It would seem that a very convenient scheme has been implemented in Russia. But reality is far from theory. In practice, the application "My Tax" does not work perfectly (in the reviews on Google Play complain of constant freezes and other errors), and now the banks are blocking accounts by self-employed.

To avoid blocking, experts recommend:

• open a separate account for business income;
  
• to warn the bank about their status as self-employed.