Small and Medium-Sized Businesses: Features of Legal Status, Government Support Measures (Comparative Analysis)

The research is dedicated to the theme “Small and medium-sized businesses: features of the legal status, government support measures”, and reveals key features of the legal regulation of SMEs. The goal of this project is to сcompare the legal regulation of government support measures for small and medium-sized businesses in Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and to define the main points of the foreign governmental support measures and to estimate their applicability for the Russian SMEs. For that purpose were used Comparative legal method, descriptive method and analytical method. In the first chapter of the research, the definition of small and medium business under the legislation of the selected countries was investigated. The main criteria for classifying an enterprise as a subject of an SME were identified. Based on the comparison, it was found that in Russia, both in the United States and Great Britain, similar criteria are used for classifying an enterprise as small or medium. The second chapter is devoted to the legal regulation of small and medium-sized business and the feature of their legal status. The chapter considered the legislation governing the SMEs in selected countries, as well as the legal status that small and medium-sized enterprises confer on these acts. The third part of the research is devoted to the government support measures for SMEs. The study revealed that in Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the forms of support provided by the government are approximately the same, for instance, in all countries there is consulting support, financial support expressed in concessional lending and granting. Of course, some measures for the further development of SMEs in Russia would be useful to borrow from foreign legislation. However, our government tries to adopt the experience of developed countries in Russia in the sphere of support and development of small and medium-sized business.