Moscow. 23 Nov. The Finance Ministry proposes to prohibit sole proprietors (SP) to sell beer at retail, said on Wednesday the newspaper “Kommersant”.
The publication refers to caught in its bill, which proposed to leave the right to the retail sale of beer and beer drinks, cider, Poiret and Mead only. The Finance Ministry proposes to introduce this provision into effect from 1 July 2017, giving Crimea and Sevastopol deferred to 1 January 2018.
The Ministry explains his initiative by the fact that FE does not fully declare their sales of beer, because for them, the penalty for failure to provide returns is small – 10-15 thousand rubles in comparison with the 150-200 thousand rubles for legal entities. Therefore, according to the Finance Ministry, “organizations that implement beer and beer drinks, in order to evade responsibility enter into sham lease agreements with PI for sale of specified products”.
According to the publication, the brewers believe such a far-fetched justification for the ban and believe that this measure will first of all hit small business. “In itself, the Declaration of beer sales – an excessive measure, as from July this year all the retailers regardless of the form of ownership shall provide information on its turnover in the Russian”, – said the Director of corporate Affairs at Heineken Cyril Bolmatov.
Director of legal Affairs of “sun InBev” oraz Durdyev said that FE is not less than 37% of the volume of outlets selling products of the company. According to him, the stores that belong to SP, beer is one of the high-margin products in the range and allows you to control prices for socially important goods. “The ban on the sale of beer will severely hurt legitimate small businesses,” he said.
