In recent years, various media, as well as in Russian society itself, have been paying increased attention to such a phenomenon as seniority. Discussions are ongoing regarding what it is, what it affects and which, in turn, has a direct impact on its formation. Many lawyers believe that the legislation governing issues related to seniority contains ambiguous interpretations. But first things first.
Why do I need experience?
The insurance experience gives the state grounds to accrue various types of social support to the citizen. The essence of the most common of them is known to all.
Firstly, it is a well-deserved pension. Of course, there are options when the state will accrue it without experience, but in this case the amount of payments will be very small.
Secondly, it is compensation for temporary disability. The length of service for the sick leave is extremely important. Especially after the recent reforms in the health care system, when a person can rely on compensation commensurate with his salary while he is on sick leave, only if his experience is sufficient (we will consider this aspect separately today).
Thirdly, it is maternity. When a woman goes on parental leave, the state provides her with measures of monetary support, also based primarily on the length of service. Many other aspects (such as the actual size of the salary) become secondary.
Insurance experience is a phenomenon not only characteristic of Russia. Similar (albeit differently named) tools for calculating citizens' work experience with the aim of correctly calculating pensions and various benefits are used in most developed countries.
Therefore, working Russians should not neglect the importance of insurance experience - the world has not yet invented a fundamentally better mechanism for accounting for labor merits, or at least has not implemented it so that it becomes a global standard.
What is included in the insurance experience, based on the regulatory framework of Russian legislation? What does its duration affect? How to confirm the length of service? What are the methods to increase it?
Experience: theoretical intricacies
The essence of the insurance period is set forth in several Russian Federal Laws at once. Firstly, this is the law "On the basics of compulsory social insurance." In it, seniority is understood as the total duration of the periods for payment of contributions (and at the same time tax deductions). In the Federal Law "On Labor Pensions", in turn, another wording is given.
According to it, the insurance period is the total length of the periods of labor activity and other time periods that are significant when calculating a pension, during which a citizen paid contributions to the Pension Fund. These two formulations are supplemented by some excerpts from the Federal Law "On Obligatory Pension Insurance". According to them, the contributions in question can be paid, even if a person does not work, also for other reasons.
Thus, lawyers consider it legitimate to state the following. On the one hand, the length of service includes work. On the other hand, contributions to state funds can be paid even if a person is not employed. In addition, as some experts believe, none of the Federal Laws directly denies this kind of phenomenon, when seniority is counted even in cases where there was no labor activity, no deductions to funds.Interesting phenomena are admissible, such as, for example, evidence that a person worked somewhere, by interviewing two or more witnesses (if there are no documents confirming employment).
Experience: practical interpretation
Many lawyers note: in their work, the state bodies responsible for calculating pensions and other operations related to calculating the length of insurance are guided not so much by the theory (which, as we have seen above, is set out in the laws very confusing), but by some norms that have prevailed in practice . Based on the most common interpretation of the Federal Law governing work with experience, it is customary in Russia to be guided by the following principles:
- The insurance experience has two main characteristics: duration (calculated in years) and content (reflects the actual conditions of employment, especially climatic zones, etc.).
- Seniority is divided into general and professional. The first is important from the point of view of calculating a pension, as well as determining the amount of various kinds of benefits.
Seniority: general and professional
If you follow the rules of the law, periods in which a citizen did not work, but only in cases where the reasons for such a state of affairs are recognized by the state authorities as respectful (military service, crises that caused reductions and unemployment, etc.) can be included in the general insurance record. d.).
Professional experience includes taking into account periods of work in difficult or harmful conditions, as well as at enterprises in special climatic zones (for example, in the Far North). It is important in terms of various bonuses, increasing odds and determining the right to early retirement.
Activities
What should a person do in order for his activity to be taken into account in the insurance record? First of all, for what he will pay contributions to state funds (and with them tax deductions). The calculation of the insurance period is carried out based on the degree of usefulness of the activity the citizen is engaged in for the state treasury and for the budget.
According to the laws of the Russian Federation, it can be either hired work (with registration under the Labor Code), or the provision of services under civil law contracts. In both cases, the amount of remuneration from the employer or the customer is taxed, firstly, personal income tax (13%), and secondly, contributions to funds, amounting to about 30% of what a person received in his hands.
In addition to hired work and “freelance” under civil law contracts, other types of activities or periods in a certain status are included in the length of service. Most often it is:
- military service time;
- periods when various kinds of state benefits are received (for disability, pregnancy and childbirth, unemployment, etc.).
There are other, less common, but quite legitimate reasons. For example, it can be periods of stay of citizens who are married to officers of the Russian army in the status of unemployed for objective reasons (in practice, this may be the situation when a husband, army general, manages the deployment of units in the Arctic islands: it is clear that his wife, most likely will not find work there). At the same time, the indicated types of activity and periods of being in a certain status are counted in the length of service on one condition - the person worked before or will be employed after.
The calculation of the insurance period required for the acquisition of the right to a retirement pension is made on a calendar basis. If several periods coincide in time, one of them is taken into account at the choice of the person who applied for the establishment of the specified pension.
How is experience
The main method for calculating seniority is calendar. The data is taken from a personalized accounting card maintained by the structures of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation.If there is not enough information in the department, then the documents that the citizen himself can provide are taken into account (labor contracts, contracts or testimonies of witnesses who are ready to confirm that the person worked there for such a certain amount of time - we are already talking about this possibility said above).
As the experience is confirmed
Confirmation of insurance experience - a moment, according to some lawyers, is ambiguous. Largely because Russia is a country where the legal field in many directions is still being formed. A significant part of the procedures, according to lawyers, still works on Soviet principles. Many experts believe that the methods for engaging seniority in calculating pensions and benefits will still be reformed, and possibly even more than once.
How is the experience of sick leave
The insurance experience, as we said above, is necessary for the state to calculate the three main types of payments: pensions, maternity, and temporary disability benefits or, more simply, payment of sick leave. Consider what formulas are applied by government departments, calculating compensation to a citizen who is being treated.
The main sources of law that serve as a guide for an accountant calculating the length of service for the sick leave are the letter of the FSS of Russia dated October 30, 2012, as well as the Federal Law "On Compulsory Social Insurance". Both there and there it is said that the specified experience is a key indicator for calculating the amount of benefits. According to the rules of the Federal Law and the recommendations of the Social Insurance Fund, the rules for calculating the length of insurance that bookkeeping carries out when calculating sick leave compensation are as follows:
- If a person has an experience of 8 years or more, then compensation while on sick leave will amount to 100% of the average monthly salary for the previous two years of employment. The formula for calculating compensation is as follows: the total amount of money earned is added up, divided by 730, and then multiplied by the number of days a person is on sick leave.
- If a citizen does not have 8 years of experience, but has 5 or more, then he is entitled to a sick leave in the amount of 80% of the "pay". From the final figure of the formula for the first paragraph, we subtract 20%.
- If a person has been engaged in activities included in the experience of less than 5 years, then the maximum that compensates the Social Insurance Fund is 60% of the average salary.
The laws also prescribe restrictions regarding cases when a person has experience of less than six months. If this is the case, then the maximum amount of sick leave is one minimum monthly wage (taking into account possible territorial coefficients).
The calculation of the insurance period, as many lawyers believe, is standardized by the legislator in a fairly understandable format (in contrast to the same mechanisms for confirming the periods of employment that we talked about above). Despite a number of discussion nuances, everything is quite logical.
Calculation of sick leave: nuances
Lawyers highlight several of the most popular discussion points that affect how insurance is accrued for sick leave. There are a number of nuances that leave many citizens indifferent. We name the main ones.
The first question that the community often cares about: does the size of compensation depend on the length of work in a particular organization, are the periods of work with previous employers taken into account in the insurance period? The laws of the Russian Federation say: it does not matter who the citizen was hired for and for how long he worked. Even if a person performed his labor functions in a new place for at least one day, he can go on sick leave and receive 100% compensation from the Social Insurance Fund, provided that he has been working for more than 8 years (or in accordance with other conditions about which we told above).
The second common question: how is average earnings calculated,if a person has been employed at the current place of work for less than two years (that is, accounting does not have complete data for the previous 24 months)? How in this case is the calculation of the length of service for sick leave? Lawyers give two answers. Firstly, the FSS database (which actually makes payments) has information that makes it easy to calculate the size of a citizen’s salary.
Similarly, the agency has information that allows for accurate calculation of insurance experience. There are uniform formulas by which the employer pays contributions to funds. In the case of the FSS specifically, this is 2.9% of the salary. That is, if the monthly payments of 1,500 rubles are reflected in the agency’s database, it is easy to calculate that the citizen’s “pay” was approximately 51,700 rubles. Secondly, if the FSS has any difficulties in calculating the average salary of a person who has gone on sick leave, then you can always provide supporting documents: extracts from the accounts of the previous employer or, for example, a tax certificate.
The third popular question: what are the maximum and minimum sizes of the sick-list? Regarding the first case: it all depends on the norms established by the state. For each year, funds set a limit. For example, in 2012, the amount of sick leave could not be more than 512 thousand (on an annualized basis). In 2013, the indicator was 568 thousand rubles, in 2014 - 624 thousand rubles. The minimum sick leave (for example, if a citizen has not worked for 2 years) is equal to the minimum wage, that is, for 2014 it is 5554 rubles. Thus, we see: the length of service for the hospital plays an important, but not decisive role. A state may set conditions under which its value may be limited.
And what is seniority?
The question arises: how do seniority and work experience correlate? Are these different phenomena or are they synonyms? Neither one nor the other. And this often causes confusion. It happens that it comes to incidents in the conceptual apparatus: there are such phrases as “labor insurance experience” and the like. The explanation, according to lawyers, lies on the surface. It is all about the peculiarities of Russian legislation, which has been actively reformed over the past 20 years.
The fact is that until 2002, labor relations and pension accrual procedures regulated the Federal Law, based on the basis of the Soviet legal system.
In it, the main category operated by government departments was precisely “length of service”.
And after a deep modernization of legislation in 2002, a completely new concept was introduced. Namely - "insurance experience". Why do many today call him labor? There are two groups of reasons.
Firstly, many citizens (especially those who grew up and retired under the USSR) simply got used to such a term as “seniority”. And therefore they continue to use this very phrase.
Secondly, in some sources of Russian law the term "length of service" is nevertheless found. But it is given there for the sole purpose of designating the periods until 2002 when the citizen worked (in the Russian Federation - since 1991, or in the USSR). Therefore, it cannot be said that the very concept of “seniority” has lost its significance on the fact of reforms. If a person first got a job, for example, in 1985 and still continues to be in the status of an employee, then when he applies to the Pension Fund for Pension, his experience from 1985 to 2002 will figure in all documents labor. And only the one after 2002 is insurance.
So, if today we somewhere hear the phrase “seniority”, then we should understand this in two possible ways:
- I mean all the same insurance experience;
- it is about designating the period of work of a person until 2002.
Other interpretations are possible, as noted by lawyers, but they are usually explanatory in nature. Of practical importance in most cases are the two ways of interpreting seniority mentioned above.
