The establishment of permissive rules for doing business is one of the instruments for the participation of the state and its institutions in the regulation of economic relations in society. The most common form of this regulation is licensing, which is carried out by the adoption at the federal level of relevant legislative acts establishing the types of activities subject to licensing.
Today, such is the law of the Russian Federation No. 99-FZ, which provides a complete list of licensed types of work. This list includes activities subject to compulsory licensing, of which there are 49 at the moment, and this is significantly less than what was provided for by previous legislative acts (the previous version of the law contained 105 items). In general, it should be noted that the decrease in the number of species for which permission is required has acquired the character of a positive trend and is in line with the processes of economic liberalization that are taking place around the world.
It is also important to take into account the fact that some types of activities subject to licensing and specified in this law have certain features in bringing them into effect. This is due to the fact that many entrepreneurs at the moment can carry out activities under permits that were issued for activities that are not licensed in accordance with the new law. And, accordingly, on the contrary, there are those who started activities on unlicensed species, and now it is necessary to draw up a permit. Therefore, the executors and the responsible services need time to re-register the entrepreneurial registration base and accurately record which types of activities subject to licensing are currently being carried out under valid permits, and which need to be re-registered or to issue new permits.
The already mentioned law 99-, which defines the types of activities subject to licensing, provides that entrepreneurial activity is subject to licensing, with the exception of the following areas:
- Activities in the field of nuclear energy: its production, transportation and sale;
- production and sale of alcohol-containing products and alcohol turnover;
- conducting various activities in the field of protecting state interests and state secrets;
- implementation of activities in the field of lending and exchange transactions;
- carrying out operations and transactions with securities and other assets;
- work related to the management and organization of investment funds;
- Creation, organization of activities and management of pension funds and depositories;
- clearing activities;
- carrying out insurance activities.
The listed types of entrepreneurship can be carried out only after special permits are issued, which are provided for by special legislative acts. As a rule, the issuance of permits of this kind provides for a strict verification procedure of the applicant. An example is the process of determining which types of medical activity subject to licensing can be entrusted to a particular applicant. The same can be said about such activities as the provision of services in the field of television, broadcasting, detective work, the organization of access to the Internet and so on.
An important feature of regulatory enactment 99-FZ is to ensure continuity and application logic. For example, this is manifested in a provision that provides that if an entrepreneur carries out a certain type of activity that does not require licensing, but previously required, then the license status expires immediately after the legislative act in force enters into force.