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Small business association appeals to Lukashenka over plight of sole entrepreneurs

The Perspektyva small business association has called on Alyaksandr Lukashenka not to increase taxes for sole entrepreneurs.

Market vendors will no longer be entitled to pay a fixed amount in valued-added tax on imports from Russia starting next year.

A presidential edict issued by Alyaksandr Lukashenka in June 2005 gave sole entrepreneurs the right to pay fixed sums and exempted them from producing papers regarding the origin of the goods until January 1, 2009 as the two countries agreed to switch over to the country-of-destination principle in the collection of VAT in bilateral trade.

Perspektyva also urged the Belarusian leader to ease his restriction on the number of employees that a sole entrepreneur may have.

The association warned that new customs rules for sole entrepreneurs "are so complicated and intricate that the authorities' target for customs payments into the budget will not be fulfilled anyway."

It said that increased costs that sole entrepreneurs would have to sustain would make their operation unprofitable.

It suggested that the tougher rules would force entrepreneurs to move their businesses abroad. "The Belarusian entrepreneurs exiled from their home country will pay taxes into the budget of Russia, Ukraine or European Union countries," the letter reads. "It will be a very painful blow on the budget of the country and the welfare of hundreds of thousands of families and the accumulated human capital."

Perspektyva stressed that it was "risky for national interests to continue the policy of eliminating sole entrepreneurs" amid the financial crisis.

It asked for a meeting with the head of the Presidential Administration, Uladzimir Makey. "We would like to have an opportunity to voice our position and make a series of constructive proposals for the mobilization of joint efforts to overcome crisis effects in the economy and society," the letter says.

Copies of the letter were sent to Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Kabyakow, who chairs an inter-agency commission on support and development of small businesses; Alyaksandr Likhachewski, chief of the economy ministry's enterprise department; as well as the State Control Committee and the tax ministry.