the Federation Council proposed to put in jail for “gray” wages. This initiative was made by the Senator Anatoly Artamonov. According to him, the measure will help our economy to recover from the pandemic. Now this penalty applies only to employers who pay wages in envelopes in the amount of 100 thousand rubles and above. In the upper house propose to put regardless of the amount.
Senator Artamonov called for strengthening the fight against the so-called “gray” wages, and offered to bring the leaders — top managers and owners of such companies to criminal liability. The author of the idea believes that will thus increase tax payments to the budget, which is now “hidden” from the tax authorities in the envelopes. The problem with shadow wages in modern Russia is really huge. According to Rosstat, in 2019 the total amount of payments to employees amounted to 13 trillion rubles.
However, independent experts consider the initiative of the Federation Council is extremely inappropriate. Now people are happy to get at least some salary, and they do not care what color it is: “white”, “gray” or “black”. Yes, to pay money in an envelope is illegal, but how much sense right now — against the background of a significant fall in income and companies and citizens — begin to hunt for such offenders?
of Course, if the proposal is supported, negligent employers will be among the victims. However, ordinary Russians have far worse: each tenant have dozens, hundreds of employees, who may be left without a livelihood during the crisis.
“Even approximate calculations show that the number of Russians who receive salaries in the envelope, very large, emphasizes a leading analyst of the Forex Optimum Ivan kapustyasky. — If we assume that the average level of shadow income amounted to 100 thousand rubles, then it will affect about 130 million people.”
According to Kapustyasky, the current crisis is not the best time to start actively “to bleach” salaries, and such radical methods. Primarily due to a significant reduction in income. “According to some estimates, the decline in real wages will be 5% this year. If time with all payments to begin to pay taxes, of course, official statistics will improve. But firms will not survive in the conditions of crisis additional fees and will either reduce wages or fire people,” — says the analyst.
the Main analyst of “Broker” mark Goikhman emphasizes that “grey” salaries in our country is so large in scale and extent that criminal prosecution of them would be a disaster for all sides. According to him, the share of informal wage — about 13% of GDP, and angles��tion article can spread to such a large proportion of the economy.
“the reasons for the existence of “shadow” payment not only and not so much in malice of employers. This is a huge tax burden in the case of exceptionally low profitability and incomes of businesses and individuals. If such rules, working conditions for the people and businesses established by the authorities themselves, the state should not punish with criminal cases that they were forced to mass violations”, — said Goikhman.
According to analysts, the sudden exit from the “shadow” driven mass “ugolovkoy”, will drop payment in the budget to increase who seem to designed the offer of the Federation Council. The workers will lose the last income and, as a consequence, the possibility of survival. Well and businessmen, for fear of “planting”, can dramatically reduce business activity, and so because of the pandemic, almost at zero.
to combat the shadow economy, of course, necessary, but it is wise to do it in “peace” time and market methods, provided that sufficient for business development in the tax environment, lack of administrative and military pressure.
