Russia caps gig workers at 60 hours a month to force tax-heavy contracts

Starting October 2026, self-employed individuals and individual entrepreneurs operating through digital platforms will face a strict 60-hour monthly limit per client. The new regulation mandates that once a freelancer crosses this threshold with one company, the platform must automatically block them from accepting more gigs from that specific client. To keep working, the business and the contractor must sign a traditional, tax-heavy employment contract.

The government is targeting digital platforms like Yandex Smena, Avito, and Djem Rabota to police this new rule. These services will have to rewrite their algorithms to track worker hours and enforce the blocks. It seems the authorities grew tired of seeing supermarkets and warehouses staffed entirely by "independent contractors" who just happened to work 40 hours a week at the exact same cash register.

The restriction covers a massive list of industries, including IT, software development, construction, logistics, retail, food service, education, and advertising. While freelancers can still work for multiple different companies to bypass the cap, the system is designed to stop companies from quietly converting their entire workforce into tax-free gig workers. According to official estimates, there are over 16 million self-employed people in the country, many of whom use the status to bypass traditional labor laws. Platforms are now scrambling to redesign their internal systems before the digital state control parameters are finalized.

Trying to micro-manage millions of freelancers with automated platform blocks sounds like a perfect recipe for massive system bugs and creative tax-evasion workarounds. The eternal battle between bureaucracy and desperate freelancers enters its most hilarious phase yet, leaving businesses to wonder if they should just hire everyone on paper or simply find a new loophole.