An important step is being prepared to index pensions for workers: the Ministry of Labor has started with the self-employed

Self-employed pensioners who continue to carry out their work shift may be excluded from the workforce. And open up to them the bright prospect of pension indexation. It is important that the corresponding bill was developed not by some opposition faction in the State Duma, but by a government structure – the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation. This means that the chances of its acceptance are very high. At the same time, indexation of pension payments can only take place if the self-employed person pays voluntary insurance contributions to the Social (Pension) Fund.

According to trade unionist Pavel Kudyukin, former Deputy Minister of Labor of the Russian Federation, the initiative of the Ministry of Labor is connected primarily with the fact that the self-employed in Russia receive unstable and not very high incomes, often simply intermittent.

“It makes sense for them to index their pensions,” he believes.

Although the expert emphasizes: it is a great injustice that working pensioners in our country do not have their payments indexed. This “Carthage,” Kudyukin argues, must be destroyed… Perhaps the process of “destruction” will begin with the self-employed?

On the one hand, for the self-employed in Russia there is no life, but a complete scam. As they say, you are your own boss. No obligations to the employer. Paid the due tax from professional activities (4-6%) and sleep well. No other contributions or payments are required from you.

It may seem that this category is literally basking in luxury and using its own income to save for a “rainy day,” including for impending old age.

However, this is not the case. According to the Federal Tax Service, last year, up to 30% of registered self-employed people had zero income. In addition, they have no paid sick leave, no paid vacation, no social package.

And with pensions for this category of workers, not everything is clear. If you don’t make contributions to the Social Fund, the state still takes care of you. But he assigns a social pension, in the amount of the minimum wage for a specific region. In 2023, it averaged a little more than 16 thousand rubles…

Self-employed people (at the end of 2023 there were about 9.3 million people in the country) are tight-fisted people. They live for today, because they do not contribute anything to their pension; only about 270 thousand people make voluntary contributions for these purposes, that is, approximately 3% of the total number of self-employed.

The idea of ​​indexing their pensions has already been supported by many politicians and public figures in the country. After all, many of them have previously made similar proposals more than once – to index payments, if not to all workers, then at least to certain categories. And then, you see, step by step, indexation will be resumed for all older workers… But for all such initiatives (for pensioners – civil servants, pensioners – disabled people), the government’s conclusion said one thing: to refuse, since the source of financing additional costs has not been determined.

And now the ice has broken… The Ministry of Labor’s bill, which will most likely be adopted without delay, can already be considered a major victory, a step towards the fact that the country will at least gradually, for certain social groups, begin to increase payments to working veterans.

– Today, only three percent of self-employed people pay insurance premiums. Is this a big loss for the budget? – we ask Pavel Kudyukin.

“How to look,” he answers. – For the consolidated budget, this is, on the one hand, lost income. But on the other hand, these people cannot apply for pensions, since they do not have accumulated pension points. The current losses will result in savings for the treasury in the future. After all, pension payments depend on accumulated labor points. And they are from funds allocated to the Social Fund to a personalized account.

– But such self-employed people, nevertheless, receive social pensions from the state…

– Not certainly in that way. If there are no accumulated work points in the account, then after retirement they must work for another 5 years and only after that they will be entitled to a social pension. That is, men will have to work until they are 70, and women until they are 65.

– What insurance premiums should be for the self-employed?

– They have not yet been determined for them. For individual entrepreneurs there is such a fixed contribution amount. But for the self-employed there is no fixed minimum. They can only pay voluntarily and as much as they can. Although, in my opinion, it is necessary to indicate a minimum.