Social tax is a type of fiscal fees, the purpose of which is to mobilize funds subsequently spent on providing medical care, as well as social and pension benefits for citizens. Since January 2010, this fiscal fee has been canceled, but soon the tax is planned to be revived, but in a new form.
Payers
Until 2010, individual entrepreneurs and various organizations that paid money to citizens under civil law and labor contracts were forced to pay social tax, and deductions were distributed between the FB, TFOMS, FSS, PFR and FFOMS. This fiscal fee was “dual”, since taxpayers were divided into two main categories. So, a single social tax, the rate of which was calculated according to a certain category of taxpayer, was paid by firms and entrepreneurs who make payments to citizens.
These include individual entrepreneurs, companies and individuals who are not, in accordance with applicable law, private entrepreneurs. The second group on UST included lawyers and individual entrepreneurs, and if a particular company belonged to two varieties, it had to pay a fiscal fee on each basis.
Object of taxation
The social tax for the first group was calculated depending on the amount of payments and other remuneration paid by fiscal tax payers to various individuals under agreements related to the provision of services or the performance of any work. But in this case, contracts related to the transfer of property or its sale were not included in the base for calculating the fee. The second group of payers was forced to pay a fee on the total amount of income received as a result of professional or entrepreneurial activity, with the exception of expenses previously incurred.
Privileges
Until 2010, social tax was not accrued when paying compensations to citizens for unused vacation, if they left their work, and when making payments under long-term health insurance contracts concluded by employers on a voluntary basis. The majority of compensations and allowances not taxed on citizens' incomes were also exempted from calculating the fiscal fee.
Tax return
The 2012 social tax is the aggregate of all contributions paid to the Pension Fund, and the Russian Pension Fund plans this year to combine all existing reporting on personified accounting and pension contributions. At the moment, organizations are forced to pay fiscal fees directly to three extra-budgetary funds for social, medical and pension benefits, and the Pension Fund proposes three different reporting documents to be combined into one declaration.
At present, firms are forced to use the “set-off” principle, in which their direct employer is required to pay sick leave, and the size of contributions to extrabudgetary funds will be reduced by exactly this amount. However, the reform of the structure of this fiscal fee has already begun, the government and relevant committees are actively discussing this issue, and the preparation of the corresponding bill should be completed in 2012.
The management of extrabudgetary funds suggests that all insurance premiums be re-combined so that payers can again fill out only one document. If in 2010 the goal of the abolition of the UST was the desire of the authorities to protect working citizens by transferring all social contributions paid by the employer to the personal accounts of employees. However, due to the increase in rates, business representatives, on the contrary, began to use shadow schemes, and the Ministry of Finance was forced to admit that nothing better than the UST could not be implemented in modern reality.