Drawback of the merger: how much the new Social Fund will take from our pockets

Victoria Pavlova

Why the society did not pay attention to these changes is understandable: while the NWO is going on, there is no time for such “trifles”. In addition, the association of funds seems to be supposed to help people. The Pension Fund of the Russian Federation and the Social Insurance Fund now often have similar, almost duplicating functions. For example, for pensioners living in the North, the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation pays for travel to a place of rest, and the Social Insurance Fund pays for a place of treatment. The disability pension is paid by the FIU, and the means of rehabilitation, including prostheses and wheelchairs, by the Social Insurance Fund. And so on. Now one fund will be responsible for all such payments. Comfortable.

Business also did not protest, as administration is simplified. You no longer need to separately account for payments to different funds at different rates. Just pay 30% of the employee's salary (previous base rate payments were also 30%) and no problem. The single payment also includes contributions to the Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund. Also convenient! Moreover, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs previously had an agreement that the fiscal burden on business would remain approximately the same. No reason to worry...

But the other day, the government presented a draft law “On the budget of the Pension and Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation for 2023 and the planning period of 2024 and 2025. The administrative changes did not come as a surprise, but their parameters are a completely different matter. Businesses that have said so many times that insurance premiums in Russia knock out their entire economy and do not give them the opportunity to develop, do not give them the opportunity to legally register employees, will receive another increase in the load. There is no way to withdraw excess profits from the oil and gas sector - all available methods of increasing “milk yields” are used.

In most developed countries, the rule is: you earn more, you pay more. But in the case of social fees in Russia, the opposite is true: the largest contributions go to people with relatively small salaries. And people with a solid income receive benefits. On the one hand, social justice from this is very lame, on the other hand, business receives an incentive to officially raise wages. Now contributions to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation amount to 22% of an employee's salary until the amount of salaries accrued since the beginning of the year (for each employee separately) reaches 1.565 million rubles. If this amount is exceeded, the employer pays contributions at a reduced rate of 10%. That is, you can get a benefit if the employee's salary is 130,417 rubles. per month or more. For contributions to the Social Insurance Fund, the benefit comes even earlier. The standard rate is 2.9% of the salary, but after the amount of salaries during the year reaches 1.032 million rubles, there is no need to pay deductions to the Social Insurance Fund at all - the rate is reset to zero. 5.1% of the salary is simply sent to the MHIF without any conditions and restrictions.

The new formula looks like this: the standard rate is 30% of the salary. And when the amount of salaries accrued since the beginning of the year reaches 1.917 million rubles, the employer switches to a preferential rate of 15.1% of the salary. Everything is much simpler than the current complex calculations. But the new limit, which gives the right to a benefit, is 22.5% more than the previous limit of contributions to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation and 85.7% more than the previous limit of the Social Insurance Fund.

What does this mean in practice? Let's take, for example, a qualified specialist, a conditional IT specialist with a reservation from mobilization and a salary of 150 thousand rubles per hand. Taking into account taxes, the employer transfers 172.4 thousand rubles. Another 37.93 thousand the employer pays monthly to the Pension Fund from January to September inclusive. Further, the established threshold is reached, and the monthly fees are reduced to 17.2 thousand rubles. For the year, the employer will pay 392.97 thousand rubles to the FIU. The employer will pay fees to the Social Insurance Fund at the full rate for 6 months, they will amount to 30 thousand rubles. Since July, in this example, they will be reset to zero - in six months, a salary of 1.032 million rubles will just run up. Payments to the MHIF will amount to just 105.5 thousand rubles. In total, the employer will pay 528.47 thousand rubles for the year.

Starting next year, the employer will pay full-time for such a specialist until the beginning of December. And only part of the last month at a reduced rate. The total deductions will amount to 595.9 thousand rubles. Overpayment - 67.43 thousand rubles per year or 12.8%. Business, and at the same time, working people, were simply deceived. Employers' desire to raise salaries for employees will clearly decrease after the associated payments are calculated. There is, of course, an alternative option - going into the shadows and refusing to pay to the Social Fund at your own peril and risk.

Even if they simply left the existing threshold of 1.565 million, then, according to the Ministry of Labor, this would lead to an increase in the fiscal burden on 12.9% of employers and 9.6% of employees, and the average amount of overpayment to the state would be 1.2 thousand rubles in year. But in fact, the overpayment is much more significant. Moreover, in 2024 the upper limit will be raised to 2.065 million rubles, and in 2025 to 2.209 million rubles.

RSPP also complains that the government has not discussed such changes with business and trade unions. The document was submitted for consideration by the Russian tripartite commission for the regulation of social and labor relations after approval by the government. Also, according to the RSPP, such tariffing is contrary to the Tax Code, which only provides for indexation by the amount of growth in the average salary.

Why did it happen? The Ministry of Finance responds briefly. Because money is needed. The department of Anton Siluanov did not give any other explanation for this arbitrariness. Otherwise, not fulfill all social obligations. People go to the SVO on mobilization, drop out of the economy - the funds receive less money. But to pay pensions to veterans and the wounded will have to. And if the mother's capital is increased ... In 2022, the income of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation should be 10,032 billion rubles, and the income of the Social Insurance Fund - 988.1 billion. Together they will receive 11.02 trillion rubles. And the budget of the Social Fund for 2023 provides for revenues in the amount of 13.371 trillion rubles. 21.3% more! The imperishable joke about milking and feeding a cow is regaining its popularity. But there is a caveat: people are not cows, they seek to find the most profitable ways for themselves, which can lead to a reduction in official salaries.