Together with pensions, will the benefits die?

Surption of the Doctor of Economics Vladislav Inozemtsev

The World Cup, which, according to the Levada Center, has been attracting the attention of Russians more than recently than the pension reform, finally remained behind-and we can return to this chapter economic event of the year.

If the opponents of the reform have already been said to be extremely briefly said (we risk saying that their voice has recently sounded much more loudly than the voice of its supporters), then the main objections came down to the fact that:

1. It is impossible to increase the retirement age now, hoping for the hypothetical growth of life expectancy by the 2030s;

2. It is impossible to refuse citizens to receive pensions against the backdrop of the lack of reforms regarding the administration of the Pension Fund;

3. It is impossible to hope that the economy will become more effective from increasing the number of labor - rather the opposite;

4. You can’t believe that people will remain trusting in power, brushing off from their main social obligation.

In addition to general reasoning, the experts counted how much the pension fund will save on citizens - from hundreds of billions of rubles for the first year of reform to several trillions at the time of its completion, and officials estimated its possible positive effect (an increase in GDP up to 1.3 % in six years). However, no one, surprisingly, paid attention to those aspects of the problem that, in fact, the pension fund does not concern.

Today, 36.3 million citizens of Russia, i.e., women and men who, respectively, were a 55- and 60-year-old milestone, is assigned an old-age pension.

In addition to a pension that should be paid to them with the onset of the specified age, the status of a pensioner gives people some benefits, and quite significant.

Let's start with additional payments that pensioners receive from regional budgets in the form of various kinds of allowances. According to the results of 2017, pensioners receiving a regional social surcharge for retirement, labor veterans, former civil servants, elderly and some other categories of pensioners received 244 billion rubles in the form of monthly and one -time payments.

Considering that the average age of retirement is about 14 years, and the relatively greater number of pensioners of the early ages in this case is compensated by the accrual of higher allowances for those who crossed the 80-year line, and based on the fact that the share of regional beneficiaries approaches 40 % of the total number of pensioners,

It will not be a big mistake to determine the scale of saving budget funds with increasing the retirement age of all categories of citizens in 6-7 billion rubles annually.

The next point is the Russian “Our everything” - housing. Today, a pensioner has the right to significant benefits for its payment. According to the current legislation, the total costs of utility bills should not exceed 15 % of the lonely pensioner’s income or 22 % of the average income of family members living with him (in some regions the threshold below - in Moscow it is set at 11 %). In practice, this means benefits from 20 to 70 % of the amount of payment for housing and communal services.

If we accept the average security of the housing of Russian citizens at 24.9 m2/person. And the average cost of housing and communal services of 124 rubles/m2 per year, it turns out that with a shift in retirement age, regional budgets will be replenished at the expense of the elderly by at least 4–5.5 billion rubles. In addition, from the “damned 90s” pensioners are completely exempted from tax on residential premises (this norm is incorporated to the Tax Code [Article 407, clause 10]).

Although the exact amount that the state brings to the hands as retirement age increases is difficult to calculate, I recall that, for example, in Moscow, the tax rate of 1 m2 of dwelling after all the deductions in 2018 is from 90 to 170 rubles/year, and the number of owners among pensioners and persons approaching the retirement age, it is quite large - precisely citizens at working age at the main and working age at the main Privatized housing in the first half of the 1990s. Thus, in the country, “Savings” in the first year under this article can reach 5-8 billion rubles.

Pensioners today have other housing benefits: they are exempted from paying land tax, are entitled to a 2-millionth tax deduction when buying new housing (which still happens under the current framework of retirement age, but in the future it will become truly unique); have benefits for gasification of residential premises; They pay at a reduced tariff for inpatient telephone communication, etc.

Only on the “housing” topics with increasing the retirement age for one year the state will be enriched by 15–20 billion rubles.

Let's go further. In the Russian Federation, pensioners enjoy travel benefits by rail, in trains of suburban communication and public transport. It is unlikely that we are mistaken if we say that the lion's share of travel is made by citizens under 70 years old, after which the mobility of pensioners is significantly reduced.

The alleged increase in the retirement age will lead more than half of this particularly active group from among the current pensioners. Even if you do not take long travel and limit 10-20 trains on trains during the year (which are free for pensioners in Moscow and the Moscow Region and are subsidized by an average of 85–90 % in the mountains of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, who did not have time to retire the elderly will pay about 6–9 billion rubles already in the first year of the reform.

Maybe in this case the Railways rule will finally be able to increase its beggarly reward (according to the results of 2016, it amounted to 2.3 billion rubles), well, at least twice. “Savings” for urban public transport on a country's scale with an increase in retirement age by one year will amount to at least 15 billion rubles annually.

However, those pensioners who today no longer rob Russian Railways and do not experience local budgets, Melteisha in public transport, require more care and constant treatment. For this, the previous Russian authorities have established a rule on a 50 percent discount, which is provided to pensioners for prescription medicines for 360 items.

The volume of this discount reaches 1.5–1.7 thousand rubles per person per year in recent years - and on average, the state will be able to “save” up to 3 billion rubles annually if the retirement period is, as it is supposed to grow by six months a year. Some pensioners refuse this benefit due to the difficulties of its design and receive monetary compensation (which, of course, will not be).

In addition, today pensioners have the right to preferential service in sanatoriums and holiday homes-and 75-year-olds use it much less often than younger cohorts, so raising the retirement age will gradually remove this “load” from budgets of various levels almost completely.

I would not want to mention the most unpleasant - but pensioners die from time to time. According to the Pension Fund, in 2017, 8.3 billion rubles were paid as a social allowance for burial and another 3.3 billion - as the “last pension” issued to the heirs of the deceased pensioner. A shift in the retirement age will release about 7–8 % of this amount for one year - but you need to have the cynicism of the Russian government in order to calculate the profits of the state from “washing hands” at the funeral of its citizens with an accuracy of up to tens of millions of rubles.

In addition, about 3.3 billion rubles a year from the Pension Fund is leaving for the payment of pensions appointed ahead of schedule unemployed citizens (now, according to the law, this is possible if there are less than two years left before retirement, and the employment service cannot find a suitable workplace).

Now, unemployed (despite the rainbow promises of “highly qualified jobs”) will remain unemployed, and the budget will save several hundred million rubles.

Anyone can continue the list - but let's compare all this with those “30 silvermen” that the authorities are going to campaigning us for pension reform - the notorious one thousand rubles of increasing increase per month. This thousand rubles, which will be received by a pensioner who retires a year later, is less than he (a) will lose in the previous year without using pension benefits, only by travel once a month by train from Moscow to Mozhaisk and one side-264 rubles] (or from St. Petersburg to Vyborg [301 rubles]) and one daily trip to the metro. or bus.

In addition, the pension benefit for the payment of housing and communal services, which this citizen will lose due to a later retirement, will amount to 25 to 40 % of the promised additional income. As for the additional costs of the medicine, it is definitely impossible to calculate them - but the lost benefit will be from 90 to 200 rubles per month, or 10–20 % of the promised increase.

Considering that every new year the threshold of retirement age will be more and more moved away, the loss of a pensioner on social benefits will grow in proportion to how the government promises to raise pensions.

And it’s not at all inflation to “eat” this thousand rubles, for example, the head of the FNPR M. Shmakov said: for citizens who have retired in the next 2-6 years, it will “annihilate” before the state deigned to accrue it (for some reason, we repeat again, no one pays attention).

We have already said that by the post, technocrats from the Ministry of Economic Development, which were obliged to be optimists, determined that pension reform will provide an additional GDP growth of 1.3 % or more. Perhaps these figures really became the result of the counting, and not fortune -telling on the coffee grounds - but personally we have doubts about it.

And that's why. The fact is that the “zeroing” of pension benefits in connection with a later retirement means an increase in real cash receipts to the budget system: either directly, through budgets of different levels due to additional taxes and fees; Or indirectly, through the reduction of budget subsidies to transport monopolies and structures operating public utilities, which will be done as soon as their services begin to be paid at full tariffs of people, as well as through reducing budget transfers to the medical insurance system.

As Russian practice shows, budget funds are not only expiring large-scale (if in the early 2010s the losses were determined in 1 trillion rubles, then according to the results of 2017, the Accounts Chamber found obvious violations by 1.87 trillion rubles, but, more importantly, their use provides extremely low animated effect. At the same time, all additional detectives will be ensured exclusively due expenses that support the economy to a much larger extent and more important industries than budget infusion.

In such a situation, it seems to us that pension reform will ensure the deepening of the crisis, since not only will bring millions into the market - we ask for forgiveness in advance - not too necessary workers, but also

will take out billions of rubles from the pockets of Russians, now giving life to competitive businesses, and will shift them in and so little in the needing treasury

Summing up, we can only be surprised again why no one pays attention to what is happening not even “monetization”, but a direct break in existing benefits, and doubt that calculations indicating a positive effect of increasing the retirement age for economic growth are made by honest professionals.