ON THE ISSUE OF THE PROBLEM OF DETERMINING THE STATUS OF A SELF-EMPLOYED CITIZEN IN THE LEGISLATION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
The settlement of the issue of determining the status of a self-employed citizen is conditioned by the need to withdraw the incomes of these citizens from the «shadow», ensuring competitiveness, establishing a simplified procedure for carrying out activities, providing various benefits and protecting interests. The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of the concepts of «self-employment» and «self-employed citizen» in legislative and other acts and develop an idea of them on this basis. According to the study, the concept of «selfemployed citizen» is rather collective, rather than legal, since it includes various groups of self-employed population. There is no single approach to the concepts of «self-employed citizen» and «self-employment» in the current regulatory legal acts. They are used in relation to the relations that regulate these acts, which does not reflect the entire content of these concepts. The only general criterion is that this category of the employed population independently provides employment, without attracting hired labor. Based on the conducted research, it is concluded that among all groups of self-employed citizens, the issue of the legal status of those self-employed who are not registered as an individual entrepreneur remains unresolved. In this regard, in order to establish the legal status, it is proposed to conditionally divide the selfemployed into two groups: 1) citizens registered as individual entrepreneurs or engaged in private practice; 2) citizens not registered as individual entrepreneurs. It is worth recognizing that such a distinction already takes place in Russian legislation on taxes and fees. As signs of the concept of «self-employed citizen», it is proposed to use the criteria fixed in the Draft Federal Law «On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation on determining the status of self-employed citizens», taking into account their refinement, requiring additional scientific research.