Online shops will be forced to draw cheques while awarding an order to the customers, not post factum, as often happens now. The Federal Tax Service (FTS) made such decision. Not only online retailers, but also delivery services with which they work, will have to buy cash registers.
The fact that the the FTS obliged online retailers to draw cheques to customers, and the time of purchase in the cheques should coincide with the real, is written in a letter of July 10 "About the application of cash registers". In the letter, signed by the deputy head of department Svetlana Andryushchenko, is said that the deviation of time on cash registers should not exceed five minutes from the time of order. Practically, it means that all couriers that work for online stores for delivery of the goods will have to carry cash registers with them. Otherwise, the company faces a fine of 30-40 thousand rubles. Earlier the fact, that the buyers received sale receipts, printed before awarding them an order, was not unlawful.
According to Data Insight’s estimates, the volume of retail e-commerce in 2012 reached 405 billion rubles ($ 13 billion), the growth for the year is 27%. In Russia there are 22 million of online buyers, in 69% of cases Russians prefer to pay ready money.
Now the great part of the market is not ready for the new rules, says President of the Association of Internet Commerce Companies Sergey Rumyantsev. According to him, more than 80% of the market is in the shade and is non-transparent to the tax authorities, it leads to unfair competition, tax evasion and selling "grey" goods. "Equipping of couriers by cash registers proves once again that the long-term infrastructure investments are needed in any serious business and that Internet trade sometimes is not less expensive than the traditional retail" — concludes Mr. Rumyantsev.
Co-founder of Wikimart Maxim Faldin doesn’t agree with him. "Now online retailers in the mass do not suppress the revenue: "grey" companies do not pay payroll taxes, paying envelope. This is their main "economy", and cheques have nothing to do",— he insists. According to Mr. Faldin the FTS struggles with the past, when unscrupulous entrepreneurs either did not print cheques in some cases, or used techniques to reset some transactions. "Our couriers have long been working with cash registers", - assured the press service of online hypermarket Ozon.ru. According to the company, in Moscow 50% is for courier delivery and 50% for points of issue of orders, in St. Petersburg — 25% and 75%, respectively, in the regions only 10% of orders are delivered by courier. 80% of the orders are paid with cash on delivery payment.
"We do not share the general panic over the new rules: it is not such high costs, so that they can have a serious impact on the business ",— continues general director of Sotmarket Vsevolod Strah. According to him, the prescription of the FTS could hit the small online stores (the average market cost of the cash register is about 10 thousand rubles), but the majority of them do not have the own delivery service and work with contractors.
"That is, the burden will fall on the courier companies, which in the absence of this option would have to equip the couriers with cash registers",— says Mr. Strah. In Sotmarket they add that huge delivery services companies — DHL, TNT,— have their own collection services, but because of the high cost the internet shops do not use the services of companies of such rank. At the offices of Russian Post, noted in Enter, the buyer is given a receipt, which is a payment document, which means that new requirements of the FTS are observed.
In detail: Kommersant newspaper, №127/П (5158), 22.07.2013.