Licensing of business activities - general provisions

As is customary in any country in the world, engaging in any type of activity in our country requires its licensing. As the law provides, the license can be obtained only after the entrepreneur registers his status or legal entity. Such licensing of entrepreneurial activity also assumes that it will precede the very beginning of business in time.

The main law that regulates entrepreneurship and specifies the essential terms of the license agreement is the law "On licensing of certain types of activities." This legal act sets forth the types of business for which an activity license is required. This law is quite volatile, various changes and additions are introduced into it as necessary, which are caused by a change in the conditions for conducting business in a modern market economy. It is difficult to list all these changes in a short article, they are quite easy to find in the appropriate legal reference books or the Internet.

It should also be taken into account that licensing of entrepreneurial activity is regulated by a number of other normative acts that detail these procedures. For example, entrepreneurial activity in the field of rendering educational services to the population is reflected in the relevant law - On Education. In the same way, these aspects are set forth in other sectoral documents.

As the Law establishes, licensing of entrepreneurial activity, in some cases is an obligatory procedure, its non-compliance entails liability, even criminal. In addition, the legislation provides for a restriction on types of non-licensed activities, that is, only legal entities can conduct its separate types. So, if it is a question of alcohol trade, it should be remembered that such activity can not be resolved to individual entrepreneurs, it can only be conducted by legal entities, and then, under certain conditions expressly stipulated by federal or regional laws and regulations.

As practice shows, licensing of entrepreneurial activity is a rather troublesome and complicated procedure. This is due to the fact that it is necessary to collect a large number of documents, properly and competently to issue them, to meet the deadlines for their submission to the appropriate authorities. This issue can be solved by recourse to the services of professional specialists.

To carry out the licensing procedure, the following basic documents are required:

- a statement from the entrepreneur about the need to grant him a license;

- originals or copies of constituent documents (originals are presented in the event that copies are not certified by a notary);

- receipt for payment of state duty;

- originals or copies of documents that are necessary to license this particular type of activity, if necessary.

Provisions on the licensing of business activities for specific types and industries are reviewed and approved by the Government of the Russian Federation. He was also given the right to determine the bodies that carry out licensing in these industries.

In the regions of the Russian Federation, special territorial bodies are created to carry out licensing activities, which consider applications of applicants and make decisions on them.

At the moment, the notifying principle of starting a business has been introduced in the territory of the Russian Federation (effective from 1 July 2009), but it did not abolish licensing as a legal procedure, it merely requires the applicant to conduct registration and licensing procedures simultaneously.