Timur Kulibayev and Zhakip Asanov discussed the issues of protection of entrepreneurs

The meeting was attended by the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan Bolat Palymbetov and Deputy Chairman of NCE Rustam Zhursunov.

They discussed the issues of implementation of the Roadmap for the implementation of the recommendations of the forum "The supervision of public prosecution in the field of entrepreneurship", which was held in June this year.

At the recent (October) expanded board meeting at the Prosecutor General's Office, which was held with participation of NCE, PGO, deputies of the Mazhilis, the central state bodies, were presented the preliminary results of the execution of the Roadmap.

One important question that was raised at the forum and the prosecutor's office, and at the Congress of NCE RK "Atameken", is pseudo-entrepreneurship, the problem of application of article 215 of the Criminal Code. The current practice has a serious pressure on the business. Pseudo-entrepreneurs get off with fines, and their numerous contractors have to re-pay more taxes, fines and penalties.

"Atameken" suggested to "reformat" the article 215 of the Criminal Code on lpseudo-entrepreneurship, to change the title and content in a fundamental way, to eliminate the term "pseudo-entrepreneurship" from the Criminal Code.

Instead of existing institution "pseudo-entrepreneurship" it is suggested to form the formal composition - an illegal formation of the legal entity, i.e., on the "nominal men", and illegal use of documents for the formation of such a legal entity.

Thus, the new content of Article 215 of the Criminal Code will be focused on unscrupulous entrepreneurs and punishment for the creation of companies on a "nominal man".

With this approach, it suffices to prove the fact of the establishment of such companies. There is no need to prove the existence of intent on illegal activity, damage to the state or others.

Unscrupulous contractors will be identified by the tax administration mechanisms. If the facts of illegal actions are confirmed, the measures of the criminal prosecution will be applied.

To this end, it is necessary to adjust the provisions of the Tax Code in the part of the administration. The National Chamber drafted the relevant amendments to the legislation.

We reached a conceptual agreement on changing the contents of the article 215 of the Criminal Code with the leadership of the State Revenue Committee. An agreement was also reached on the need to release from liability persons in cases when they first committed tax crimes, but voluntary pay tax (art.245) (similar to customs duties).

On 18^th of November this year, the approaches developed by the National Chamber will be discussed at the parliamentary hearings on the further modernization of the criminal, criminal-procedural and criminal-executive legislation.

During the meeting of the heads of NCE and the Attorney General, they discussed issues of deregulation and supervisory functions of state bodies. According to the appeals of businessmen, a large number of inspections by state bodies and redundancy of requirements of regulatory bodies prevents the normal conduct of business in the country.

As a result of the analysis of supervisory and control functions carried out by the Prosecutor General’s Office and NCE, it is proposed to conduct 9 of 25 exceptions on inspections to transfer to a general order, and of the 132 areas where checks can be carried out (land, customs, technical regulations), it is proposed to eliminate 13 overlapping spheres.

In the third week of November 2016 proposals will be submitted to the Intergovernmental Commission, chaired by First Deputy Prime Minister Askar Mamin.

The focus of NCE RK "Atameken" and the General Prosecutor's Office – is unscheduled inspections of the tax authorities, which make up 1/3 of all the checks of supervising bodies.

"Atameken" proposes to specify in which cases can be assigned these inspections, expansion of the list of alternative tax inspections through the development of self-regulation institution in the audit and tax activities, to use a combined approach to risk management in the field of taxation.

"Atameken"  also has made an application to the Parliament to introduce amendments in order to enable the taxpayer to get acquainted with the preliminary act of inspection and in case of disagreement to submit objections (to be considered by the Internal Control Service).

Entrepreneurs in their appeals to NCE also complained on the redundancy of control requirements by the state bodies. At the moment there are more than 28 thousand requirements.

In this regard, NCE has begun work on revision of requirements and the requirements of the sphere of sanitary and epidemiological surveillance will be analyzed in 2016 (63 SanPiN Rules, which contain about 10 thousand requirements for entrepreneurs) and fire safety (more than 3 million requirements).

At the meeting, Timur Kulibayev and Zhakip Asanov addressed the question of pre-trial settlement of tax and customs disputes.

"Atameken", together with the Ministry of Finance and State Revenue Committee adopted an approach to improve the situation.

In particular, they proposed innovations: the Ministry of Finance created Appeal Commission, which deals with complaints about the notification of state revenues on the findings. The Commission is entitled to request information, including components of the tax and customs secret.

These approaches are included in draft law on tax and customs administration, developed by the Ministry of National Economy. The draft law was introduced by the Mazhilis. It is planned to introduce changes on 1^st of July 2017.

The proposals for the further improvement of the Arbitration Institute were also developed.

The forum "Supervision of public prosecution in the field of entrepreneurship" and at the last board meeting at the General Prosecutor's Office was announced the problem of avoiding the responsibility of civil servants. They do not accept any responsibility for the mistakes that caused serious losses for business. Criminal, administrative and disciplinary measures are used very rarely.

In this regard, the National Chamber proposed to strengthen the institution of disciplinary sanctions, to provide for the possibility of suspension of the terms until resolution of the dispute in a court.

This issue is included in the updated version of the Roadmap for the further development with the concerned authorities.

All the systematic problems of business - at the control of NCE "Atameken" and the Prosecutor General’s Office. Preliminary results will be discussed by Timur Kulibayev and Zhakip Asanov in December.