Freelancers shouldn’t celebrate just yet: the cancellation of individual NBU’s licenses to place funds in accounts of foreign banks and invest funds from these accounts abroad doesn’t apply to those who are registered as individual entrepreneurs.
The National Bank of Ukraine canceled the need to obtain individual licenses for transactions related to placing funds in bank accounts outside the country (excluding funds from Ukraine).
In addition, investment activities with such funds abroad also will not require individual licenses (for example, purchasing foreign securities or real estate). However, both these provisions apply only to individuals who are not registered as individual entrepreneurs.
Freelancers who work as individual entrepreneurs in Ukraine – such as programmers or designers – still can not open accounts abroad, accept payments from overseas clients there and dispose funds freely without NBU’s licenses.
“That is, even if incomes of individual entrepreneurs abroad are in no way related to their business activities in Ukraine, they still have to obtain a license,” the legal expert of the Better Regulation Delivery Office Denis Malyuska said. He noted that it would be fairer to take into account whether these transactions were related to business or not rather than whether individuals were registered as entrepreneurs or not. However, the regulator has chosen the criterion of being registered as individual entrepreneurs, because it is much easier to apply.
Denis Malyuska claims that despite the limits of the reform, the cancellation of this archaic provision from Soviet times is a positive step for the market. The life of the regulator, which lacked the tools and resources to control the process of receiving and using funds in foreign accounts of individuals, also will be easier.
“Currency regulation requires the further liberalization, but in our case even these micro-steps are important. Suffice it to recall that those actions, which are now excluded from the licensing regime, were considered to be a crime in 2011 and could be punished by a two years imprisonment,” the expert said.