From three to six: criminal punishment for non -payment of insurance payments is returned

The Government of the Russian Federation has completed the preparation of the bill on the introduction of criminal punishment for companies and citizens that evade the payment of insurance premiums to the Pension Fund and the compulsory and medical insurance funds, the Kommersant newspaper writes.

The maximum punishment, as follows from the bill, published by the Ministry of Justice for an independent anti -corruption examination, for non -payment of the contributions of pension, compulsory and medical insurance, it may amount to 6 years in prison.

Thus, according to the publication, the authorities close the hole they created in 2010 in the legislation, because now, unlike taxes, non -payment of contributions is punishable only by fines. From January 1, 2010, we will remind, in Russia a single social tax was canceled (UST). Instead, insurance premiums were introduced, the responsibility for the non -payment of which was much softer.

The proposed amendments to the Criminal Code expand the effect of its current articles 199.1 and 199.2 - on the failure to fulfill the duties of a tax agent and on the concealment of funds, due to which taxes should be recovered.

In addition, two new articles appear in the code. This is the article 199.3 “evasion of insurance premiums from an individual” applicable to individual entrepreneurs with the same as in the “tax” article of the Criminal Code, a set of punishments (a maximum of three years of imprisonment). For organizations (in practice - for general director and chief accountants), Article 199.4 "Evasion of the payment of insurance premiums from the organization" is introduced.

The maximum punishment, as in the case of taxes, is six years in prison. In addition, the bill records for extra -budgetary funds the same forms of interaction with law enforcement officers that now exist for tax authorities.

To equalize the punishment of tax slonists and non -payers of insurance premiums, the government forces the depressing and not yet advertised statistics of the Pension Fund, the newspaper writes. The scale of evasion, we note, are also evidenced by the data given recently by Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets: out of 87 million people of the working population of Russia, contributions are fully paid for by only 47 million.

Experts, with whom the authors of the publication talked, believe that the new tightening will reduce the number of legal jobs and accelerate the process of replacing Russian workers with migrants, for which contributions are not paid or are made in minimal volume.