In the conditions of the current world crisis and increasingly strict measures to combat the virus, business is much more than usual counting on assistance and support measures from the state.

At the moment, many support measures are being developed and implemented in Russia, starting from the postponement of reporting deadlines and preferential lending up to measures to reduce the tax burden (in particular, insurance premiums). A significant part of these measures is aimed at supporting small and medium-sized businesses.

Briefly, let us remind you that the status of SMEs and the criteria are prescribed in the Federal Law No. 209-FZ dated 07.24.2007 with subsequent amendments.

Meaning has:

the size of the average number of employees for the previous calendar hour (up to 100 people for small enterprises; up to 250 people for medium-sized enterprises);
the amount of income from conducting business activities for the preceding calendar year (up to 800 million rubles for small enterprises; up to 2 billion rubles for medium-sized enterprises);
To obtain SME status, the company must also be entered in the appropriate register (https://rmsp.nalog.ru/).

For a long time, the status of an SME was closed to companies with a large share of foreign capital, since in addition to the threshold values ​​indicated above, there was a restriction on the share of Russian capital at a minimum of 51%.

Does this mean that subsidiaries of foreign founders will not be able to take advantage of the benefits and preferences offered by the government?

We remind you that December 1, 2018 certain clauses of the Federal Law No. 313-FZ “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises in the Russian Federation” entered into force, according to which the criteria for the status of an SME subject were changed. We wrote about this in our review 02/2018 dated 08/22/2018. After the entry into force of these amendments, the status of an SME became available to those companies in which the share of foreign participation exceeds 49%.

At the same time, a necessary condition is the compliance of the parent company with the criteria of small and medium business established in the Russian Federation.

However, Russian companies with more than 49% foreign participation will be able to be entered into the Register (see above), that is, to officially receive SME status, only after the reporting of their parent organizations is checked for compliance with the SME criteria in force in Russia.

Authorized auditing organizations, entered in the control copy of the register of auditors and auditors, carry out similar checks organizations

Olga Grigoryeva, general director of Shternhoff Audit LLC, comments:

“According to part 6.2 of article 4.1 of the Law on SMEs, the source of such data for maintaining a single register of small and medium-sized enterprises are auditor organizations. This authority is implemented in the following order:

1) the auditing organization provides auditing services (at the initiative of the economic entity) to economic entities interested in including information about them in the unified register of SME entities. The service consists in confirmation by the auditing organization of the compliance of the participants of the economic society – foreign legal entities with the above criteria (confirmation is carried out annually).

This audit service is provided by audit organizations in accordance with:

Part 6.2 of Article 4.1 of the Federal Law “On the Development of Small and Medium-Sized Entrepreneurship in the Russian Federation” (as amended by Federal Law dated August 3, 2018 No. 313-ФЗ);
The international standard, which provides confidence (MSZOU) 3000.

2) in order to confirm the indicated compliance, the auditing organization compares the data on the amount of income per hour and the average number of employees of the foreign legal entity with the above criterion. For comparison, the company-customer of the service must present to the auditing organization the report of the foreign legal entity for the corresponding year, submitted to the tax authority of the country where the entity is established;

3) based on the results of the provision of this service, the auditing organization forms a list of companies that were created before December 1 of the year preceding the current calendar year, and whose participants are foreign legal entities that meet the criteria described above;

4) the auditing organization sends a list of such companies to the Federal Tax Service of Russia. The list is presented in the form of an electronic document, signed with an enhanced qualified electronic signature, using the official website of the Federal Tax Service of Russia. The deadline for submitting the list is from July 1 to July 5.”

According to the currently presented explanations and comments, only companies with official status, that is, entered in the register, will be able to take advantage of the proposed preferences for SMEs in the Russian Federation.

It is not yet clear whether this regulation will be clarified. In this regard, we recommend checking the relevance of the procedure described above for your company.

We will be happy to answer your questions on this and other topics!