New law on entrepreneurial activity establishes level playing field in Belarus’ market

The new law on entrepreneurial activity establishes a level playing field in Belarus’ market, Deputy Head of the Belarus President Administration Aleksandr Yegorov said in an interview to Belarus 1 TV channel, BelTA has learned. According to Aleksandr Yegorov, an income tax is 13%, more than 30% of contributions go to the Social Security Fund of the Labor and Social security Ministry. Individual entrepreneurs do not make significant payments to the fund. The amount of tax they pay is less than income tax. “Business, and not even business but citizens should work in equal conditions,” Aleksandr Yegorov said. “Therefore, this law will, first of all set equal tax payments. Second, it will push those who really want to do business to leave the cohort of individual entrepreneurs. After all, sole proprietorship is not about business, but about providing for oneself. It is not very fair when many people, hiding behind the fact that they are individual entrepreneurs, carry out large amounts of business. It is not correct from the legislative point of view. Under the law, they will be allowed to switch to the mode of functioning as joint stock companies or unitary enterprises - small and medium-sized businesses,” Aleksandr Yegorov said. All types of activities that individual entrepreneurs will be able to carry out will be determined by the government before 1 July. The rest will have to switch to legal entities by January 2026. “The government has been tasked to make this transition seamless, so that there were no problems in terms of changing the legal status,” Aleksandr Yegorov said. The law “On changing laws on entrepreneurial activity” was published on the national legal internet portal on 26 April. The document is aimed at establishing simple, clear conditions and incentives for the organization and scaling of business, creating a competitive environment between different organizational and legal forms of small business. The document introduced amendments to the Civil, Criminal, Tax, Housing and Budget Codes, the Code of Administrative Offenses, the Code of Administrative Offenses, the Code of Administrative Procedure and Enforcement, the laws “On Protection of Consumer Rights,” “On Employment of the Population of the Republic of Belarus,” “On Support for Small and Medium-Sized Entrepreneurship,” “On Amendments to the Laws on Taxation”. The main provisions of the legal act come into force on 1 October 2024, the rest – on 27 April 2024.