The system of involving citizens’ money in the economy is acquiring benefits

The White House has taken another step towards launching a program to attract long-term money from citizens – a bill has been submitted to the State Duma to expand the mechanism of tax deductions from income taxes on voluntary pensions and simply long-term savings of citizens. With a minimum ten-year investment in future pensions, when accumulating savings in non-state pension funds and when investing in the stock market through the updated mechanism of individual investment accounts, citizens will be able to return up to 52 thousand rubles per year. income tax paid by them. The government hopes that such an updated investment deduction will help attract money saved by the population to the Russian economy, which is in dire need of investment.

The amendments to the chapter of the Tax Code on income tax, discussed at a government meeting on Wednesday and immediately submitted for approval by parliamentarians, are intended to give the population another material incentive to participate in the voluntary long-term savings program launched by the authorities. Prior to this, the state had already promised citizens co-financing of their savings. In 2024–2026, it will be “ruble for ruble” with an income of a program participant of up to 80 thousand rubles. per month and “two for a ruble” – from 80 thousand to 150 thousand rubles.

Let us remind you that the law on long-term money was signed by Vladimir Putin in July of this year; it will come into force on January 1, 2024. Last week, the president instructed the government and the Central Bank to calculate, by November 1, how many citizens are willing to participate with their money in the program and approximately how much they could contribute to the economy. Let us recall that in addition to the opportunity to make new savings, program participants will have access to funds that they managed to accumulate before 2014 (as part of the generally unsuccessful voluntary pension program) if they register them as a down payment in an agreement with a non-state pension fund.

The Ministry of Finance, represented by its head Anton Siluanov, has already named the expected parameters of the new pension initiative. “We plan to attract 2 million people to this program in the near future,” he said in August. According to the minister, according to estimates, this will allow collecting up to 300 billion rubles. Long-term pension savings will be insured similarly to bank deposits, but for twice the amount – 2.8 million rubles.

In general, judging by the expectations of the Ministry of Finance, much more long-term money may be attracted in 2024, up to 1.3 trillion rubles. In addition to the long-term savings program, we are talking about shared life insurance (a bill on it is being considered by the State Duma) and individual investment accounts of the third type (IIS-3), which can be opened from January 1 next year.

The government expects that citizens’ savings will be able to partially compensate for the withdrawal of foreign investors from financial markets and support economic activity. Now the level of gross savings is about 30% of GDP (versus gross savings of about 22%). As First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov noted earlier, “this resource of underutilized savings has the potential to increase capitalization of the stock market.” According to his assessment, it is necessary to increase the share of investment insurance and pension products in citizens’ savings from last year’s 21% to 26% in 2025 and to 36% in 2030.

Amendments to the Tax Code introduced on Wednesday in the State Duma in development of this process “will contribute to the formation of favorable tax conditions for long-term savings of citizens and, accordingly, the influx of investments into the financial market,” the explanatory note to the project says. In total, the amendments describe four subtypes of investment tax deductions: for contributions to non-state pension funds for future additional pensions, for payments to them under the long-term savings program, for the return of part of the expenses for the purchase of securities using the IIS-3 mechanism, as well as for final income, received from such transactions. The general key condition for receiving a deduction is that the investment period must be at least ten years.

For the first three subtypes of deduction, its maximum amount will be 400 thousand rubles. per year, that is, from this amount of paid contributions, savings made or expenses on securities, a citizen will be able to return 13% (52 thousand rubles). “The key conditions for the provision of tax benefits will be, accordingly, the fact of receiving a non-state pension, the grounds for assigning payments under a long-term savings agreement occur no earlier than ten years from the date of its conclusion and the validity period of the agreement for maintaining IIS is at least ten years (in the transition period – at least five years with annual increases of one year up to ten years),” explains the White House.

According to Sergei Belyakov, president of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), the introduction of an investment deduction will help make the long-term savings program more popular among Russians. “We support this initiative and look forward to its speedy implementation,” said Sergei Belyakov.

Let us note that the expansion of the investment deduction will obviously lead to a loss of part of the personal income tax collections – this tax, we recall, goes to the regional budgets. The amount of “loss” is not reported in the financial and economic justification for the bill. It only says about the costs that the federal budget will bear for the introduction of innovations. This is money for improving the software of the Federal Tax Service of Russia, necessary for administering the deduction procedure – 610 million rubles. (according to expert assessment and for a three-year period). Expenses over a three-year period for maintaining the developed software and related infrastructure will amount to another 203 million rubles.

Please note that the current investment tax deductions for personal income tax for already existing individual investment accounts of the first two types are preserved. However, the government has added a fly in the ointment to the barrel of “tax honey” it has prepared: with regard to income from the sale of securities of foreign issuers, the investment deduction for personal income tax will be canceled (this will not affect only the securities of issuers registered in the EAEU states).

Vadim Visloguzov, Anastasia Manuilova, Diana Galieva