In business turnover, a term such as forfeit is often considered. This concept in accordance with Russian law is considered in the Civil Code (Article 330 of the first part). In it, fines, penalties, which are synonyms of the forfeit, are indicated as amounts determined by law or contract paid to the creditor if the obligation is not fulfilled in an appropriate manner (for example, fines are often paid due to late payment).
Forfeit is a relationship between a debtor and a creditor that must be fixed in writing without fail (usually in the form of a clause in an agreement). If this has not been done, penalties, fines are not entitled to exist. In addition, it is impossible to demand that the penalty be paid if the debtor is not responsible for any obligation or its proper implementation.
As already mentioned, a penalty is a concept established by a contract or law. In the latter case, it is called legal and is paid regardless of whether the parties have agreed on it or not. Penalties in the form of a legal penalty can be increased, but if they are incommensurable with the consequences that led to non-fulfillment of obligations (very high penalties), in accordance with a court decision, the size of the penalty can be reduced (according to Article 333 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).
The percentage of the penalty is established by the contracting parties or is rigidly fixed in the relevant regulatory act. For example, we often see a penalty for late payments in receipts for payments for an apartment or electricity, the size of which is indicated in local legislation.
When the penalty is a payment disproportionately large in comparison with the amount of the principal debt, the debtor is obliged to provide evidence of this state of affairs to the arbitration court of any instance. As a rule, the court makes a positive decision if the case concerns only apparent disproportion. In this case, interest and payments that have already been made to the creditor are taken into account. But it is not worth counting on reducing the size of the forfeit if it was increased for some reason in its legitimate part.
For tax purposes, the penalty for late payments and other violations of the fulfillment of obligations relate to the recipient non-operating income in the event that they are recognized by the debtor person or the organization has a court decision that has entered into force . This procedure is established in Article No. 250 of the Tax Code of Russia.
In accounting, fines and penalties are reflected when a month has passed since the court order came into force (if there was no appeal to arbitration instances) or they were recognized as a debtor person. The basis for recognition should be a document, for example, a letter, a bilateral act, etc. Transactions are carried out on the debit of account 76 and the credit of account 91. When the amounts of the penalty are directly received by the organization, the creditor needs to make postings on the credit of the 76th account and debit of account No. 51 .