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Now I’m going to show you an enemy of the state.
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I’m running for office because this cannot
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go on. Senya Romanova.
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An enemy of Putin’s state, but for
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President Navalny, she would be the best
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friend. Under the current laws, a person like her
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—the person you are about to see—simply ought to be
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put in jail.
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After all, she is an illegal entrepreneur, and
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the same kind of “criminals,” in quotation marks,
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in our country are almost everyone who
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earns extra money on the side: tutors,
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taxi drivers, massage therapists, manicurists, coaches,
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movers—in other words, people who do some kind of work
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from home or travel to their
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clients.
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My name is Ksenia, I’m 26 years old, and I live in
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the city of Tver.
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I work as a graphic designer, and in
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my free time I make
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handmade herbal teas
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and preserves. I make them in
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the Tver region, in a village where my two
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grandmothers live. We have a vegetable garden, and on
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our plot I grow herbs and berries
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for tea. Some things I gather in the fields or in
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the forest. In our country, in recent years,
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there has been a lot of talk about
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import substitution, but people are being pushed out of the market
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all the same. At the moment, I
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can sell my products only through
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the internet and at handmade fairs. To
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sell my products through stores,
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I would need to
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register a legal business entity.
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When I first started pursuing this hobby, I
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thought that to make it official
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I would only need to register
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as a sole proprietor and
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get a certificate of compliance for
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the products. But it turned out not to be so simple.
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In addition to the certificate, I also need to
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draw up technical specifications,
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provide a separate space for
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production, and then
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all I can think about is how to survive,
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how to pay taxes and contributions, how to
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comply with all the regulations. For me, that
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is not an option right now, because I do
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this almost entirely on my own, and the volume
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I produce
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would not cover my investment in registering as a sole proprietor.
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And in the end, instead of doing
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what I love, I would have to deal with
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bureaucracy, and in that case, any talk of
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a high-quality, conscientiously made product
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goes out the window. The tax system
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and reporting requirements are set up in such a way that they
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simply destroy the income of people like
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Senya. Now imagine you’re a tutor, and
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schoolchildren come to you five times a week
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for paid lessons. Yes, you earn
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something—but let’s be honest: if
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you are forced to file reports,
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register officially, carry paperwork to
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the tax office, sign a contract with
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an accountant—you simply won’t be able to
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do it. It will be easier for you to give up
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that income and stop giving
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lessons.
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And who exactly will that make things easier for? The advantage of
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President Navalny’s approach is that
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when people appear who want
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to earn a little extra money, we give those people
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the green light. All Ksenia would have to
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do under my presidency
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is send an email notification saying
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that she is now running her own business and
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pay a very small fixed
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patent fee, if her activity
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is profitable. That’s all—nothing else.
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No inspections, no approvals,
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no reporting,
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no accountants. The state
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exists for people like Senya, and under me
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it will do everything so that all self-employed people,
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all freelancers, can work freely and
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earn money.