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Are taxmen to lay hands on freelancers?

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Belarusian tax agencies have got to the Internet. The scheme of “live-bait fishing” is easy.

Reports about that appeared at specialised websites and forums. Victims of “sample purchases” were freelancers who obtain orders on the web. The scheme of live-bait fishing is easy. A tax inspector finds a freelancer, a programmer or designer from Belarus, through a freelance employment exchange and offers to create a website for a company which really exists. “The client” fills in a brief; other formalities are completed, and after that a meeting is offered for prepayment for the service. Then everything goes in a usual manner: detention, a report, a trial, a fine, Electroname.com informs.

As a rule, a freelancer is charged with “unregistered business activities”. Punishment under this article is a fine from 10 to 50 basic units, with confiscation of revenue earned, and since February 23, 2010 the fine for such actions was increased to 100 basic units.

Needless to say taxes should be paid, but one should be aware that even with a strong desire to observe all the formalities and demands of the Belarusian state, it is impossible for a freelancer. Even if a programmer is registered as an individual entrepreneur, and pays all the taxes, he or she won’t avoid problems. Any “movement of the body” should be recorded, a contracts signed, a receipt issued. How could it be done via the Internet? Officials can interpret transactions via electronic payment systems in a peculiar way, too. Often incoming payments to WebMoney purse, which is owned by every busybody in town, is viewed as income.

Most of freelancers who are trying to earn extra 100-200 dollars a months, cannot afford an opportunity to enter into costly relations with the state, and continue at their own peril and risk to turn a penny in the Internet illegally.

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