Trick with dismissal: working pensioners talked about a cunning way to increase income

“Whatever, but still an increase!”

Our hero is 67 years old. He lives in the capital of one of the national republics of Russia. He has a Tatar first name and patronymic, but he asks to be called “Uncle Misha,” because in his youth that was what his colleagues in the army called him, and then the name “grew on” to him. Even his wife, also a Tatar by nationality, does not call him anything other than Misha. Our hero has been repairing televisions all his adult life. He started working in a Soviet service center, then there were frequently changing CJSCs, OJSCs, and individual entrepreneurs… “I’ve always only been able to work with my hands,” the master explained. — In the early 90s I wanted to open my own repair shop, but I quickly realized that I couldn’t handle accounting and taxes – I didn’t have any education. So I remained a simple repairman.”

About twenty years ago he met, as he himself says, “his man” – a businessman who was 10 years younger than him. He opened a repair shop in the area where Uncle Misha lived, and since then has been his constant boss and employer. Moreover, his boss turned out to be a successful businessman, and now owns a small network of repair shops of regional importance. The boss values ​​and respects Uncle Misha, as his oldest and most experienced employee, never depriving him of orders, salaries, or bonuses.

In general, when Uncle Misha turned 60 years old (“Thank God, I made it before the pension reform,” our hero smiles), he signed up for a pension with a calm soul, and, as if nothing had happened, continued to work in the same place and for the same salary.

The only semblance of conflict he had with his boss happened after the pandemic. People then, emerging from the coronavirus “home confinement,” flooded the workshop with orders. I had to work 10 hours a day or more, and often on weekends. Our hero could not stand it and, when he came to talk to his boss, he asked for a salary increase. He replied that after many months of pandemic downtime, which his business barely survived, he could not raise wages even if he wanted to. And he spoke about a scheme that pensioner Uncle Misha had never heard of before: to achieve an increase, but not at the expense of the company, but through the state indexation of pensions. The boss suggested that he write a statement “of his own free will” and resign, but fictitiously. In fact, continue to work as well, only receiving your earnings “in an envelope.” They say that business inspections were canceled during that period and the scheme will completely “slip through.” And after two or three months, when the Pension Fund recalculates and accrues to the “retired” pensioner all the indexation pensions due over the years, he will officially be reinstated in his position and will continue to work for the same salary, but with an increased pension. That’s how it all happened: with the dismissal, and with the envelopes, and with the recount, and with the new arrival at the same job. According to Uncle Misha, his pension at that time was about 18 thousand rubles, and after recalculation, three months later, it grew to more than 21 thousand. No matter what, but still an increase in income!

And last year, our hero himself asked the boss to repeat the same technique with “dismissal”. “There was double indexation of pensions, remember? – he says, – I’m keeping an eye on this now! I didn’t want to miss her.” In general, in the fall of 2023, when Uncle Misha was reinstated in the same job for the second time, his pension already exceeded 24 thousand rubles per month. “Plus a salary of 60 thousand in hand,” says our hero. “It could be more, but I don’t work overtime and on weekends: my health is not the same. The children have grown up, they are standing on their own feet, they are already raising their own children, our grandchildren, and my wife and I—she is also a pensioner, but not working—seems to be enough.”

“I’ll probably quit again this year.”

Professor Anatoly Dmitrievich from Samara is 65 years old. He works at one of the city’s universities. “I studied here and after graduating from university I stayed to work here,” he says. — At first he worked as a simple teacher, but after 3 years of graduate school, having defended his dissertation, he became a candidate of biological sciences. I really liked my work and so after a while I entered doctoral studies. True, due to family circumstances, I did not defend my doctorate immediately, but only after 6 years. But better late than never.” Today Anatoly Dmitrievich is a Doctor of Biological Sciences, head of the department, and a fairly well-known scientist in his field.

Our hero has been retired for a long time, his work experience is about 40 years, but, according to him, the pension of a research assistant is a cat’s cry: less than 20 thousand rubles. With a professor’s salary of 65 thousand rubles before tax.

“All my life I had decent earnings, adequate colleagues, good management, and most importantly, interesting work. And it seemed it would always be like this. But alas! No, no one sent me to a well-deserved rest or hinted at retirement age. It’s just that at some point the university management started a reorganization and began optimizing the number of employees. Thank God, it didn’t get to me. Despite the fact that in our organization 8 out of 10 teachers are working retirees. But, unfortunately, pensions for such citizens are still not indexed,” complains Anatoly Dmitrievich.

As our hero noted, many of his retired colleagues, in order to get their honestly earned increase, simply use a trick: immediately after the end of the school year they write applications of their own free will, and from September 1 they are hired again. “This way they receive all the indexation due to them plus payments for unused vacation. In the summer they rest, and in early autumn they return to their native land. And you won’t believe it, the leadership is meeting them halfway.”

The scientist categorically disagrees with the government’s decision to abolish the indexation of pensions for working pensioners: “There is no such thing as extra money. Moreover, I still try to help my daughter a little. She is a single mother, works full time as an engineer, and is raising a 5-year-old son. To be honest, I resisted for a very long time and did not want to take risks, like many of my retired friends. But at some point I still plucked up courage, went to management and asked to fire me at the end of spring. Naturally, he told me why. And he promised to return to work. The employer agreed to take part in the implementation of such a scheme for the sake of retaining teaching staff. As a result, we agreed that all this time I would go to university and would not give up on students or my classes. The payment will simply be “gray”. Namely – “in an envelope”. They agreed that they would pay me about 50 thousand rubles.”

Anatoly Dmitrievich was officially fired. As a bonus, he promised his boss not to take the required annual leave, having received compensation for it upon dismissal. “My pension was indexed quickly because I receive it on a bank card. And it increased by 5 thousand rubles. Of course, this is a joke to the chickens, but even that kind of money isn’t lying around on the road today. If you do the math, this money turns into 60 thousand rubles in a year, and with that amount you can go to a sanatorium, get treatment, help your family, and treat yourself to a jar of red caviar on holiday.”

After recalculating his pension, our hero, as planned, was safely restored to his university. And he even began to think about trying this scheme again next summer: “Perhaps I will quit again this year. Our government promises another recalculation for non-working pensioners by as much as 7.4%. It would be a shame to lose that kind of money.”

“I ate the dog during pension indexation”

Our third hero is a childless Muscovite, 67-year-old widower Mikhail Vladimirovich, who works as an economist in one of the banks. According to him, being a financially savvy person, he has been using the “trick” of recalculating pensions in his life for a long time. “I’m far from a young man; I’ve been living alone in a one-room apartment for 20 years,” says the Muscovite. “And I’ve learned to calculate my small finances—salary and pension—well. I understand that I, a pensioner, need to live on a limited budget. And if you calculate my monthly income, it won’t be much. Pension – 20 thousand rubles. The salary is also small – 60 thousand rubles in hand. You yourself understand that it is quite difficult to live on this money in Moscow. If you count the expenses, it becomes quite sad.”

As a result, on the advice of one of his friends, who indexed his pension by quitting his job, the man also decided to conduct such a simple experiment and became so enraged that he had already done it three times: “True, I don’t use such “benefits” of our state.” Every year. And, frankly speaking, this has already “eaten the dog.” I know all the subtleties and tricks of this process.”

As a Muscovite said, if a person works as a salesman or a builder or in the government sector, then there will be no problems with returning to the organization: “The first time I quit for 3 months. During this time, my pension was indexed by 4 thousand rubles. At the same time, I agreed with the employer that I would go to work once a week. The rest of the time is remote work. They paid me 40 thousand rubles “in an envelope”. The second time I quit about 2 years later. But already for six months. Indexation then amounted to around 5 thousand rubles.” So now our hero’s pension is no longer 20 thousand, as it was originally, but almost 30 thousand.

Mikhail Vladimirovich advises all working pensioners to quit on the last day of the month. In this way, it will be possible to receive a salary for the entire month and start receiving an increased pension with indexation from the 1st day of the next month: “If a pensioner submits a letter of resignation of his own free will, indicating in it that he is leaving due to retirement, then there is no need will work the 14 days required by law. If, for example, you decide to quit on March 31, then I do not recommend returning to work before May 1. Then the pension will be indexed in connection with the previous dismissal.”

A loophole in the law that benefits everyone

Surprisingly, the scheme used by some working pensioners, including our heroes, involving dismissal and subsequent reinstatement at the same place of work, but after receiving all the pension increases, is completely legal. In fact, they are simply taking advantage of a “loophole” in the regulatory framework of pension law, accidentally, or perhaps intentionally, left by the authorities. “There are no restrictions in the legislation on the indexation of a pension for a working pensioner after dismissal, and there are also no restrictions on the restoration of work,” says Alexander Safonov, a professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. “The right to work is guaranteed by the Constitution.”⁠ It is, of course, possible to limit the receipt of an indexed pension upon re-entry to work, but this will lead to pensioners working in the shadow sector, which means the state will not receive taxes on the wages of such workers, therefore It is more profitable for the authorities to maintain the current situation. Personal income tax of 13% and 30% of contributions to social extra-budgetary funds are charged on wages. Thus, from a ruble of salary, 40 kopecks will come to the budget. In addition, now pensioners can continue to work as self-employed, and this also allows them to receive an indexed pension, the professor noted.

Moreover, in this scheme, an older employee also risks almost nothing: his job, due to the difficult situation on the labor market in Russia, will remain almost one hundred percent with him. “Often pensioners agree in advance with the employer, while others simply understand that finding a new job will not be difficult or are confident that they will take him back,” notes Associate Professor of the basic department of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation “Human Resource Management” of the Russian Economic University. Plekhanova Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets. “This is the current situation in the labor market due to the shortage of workers.”

The applied scheme is also beneficial for employers: they do not lose valuable employees who quickly and willingly return to them and at the same time do not spend money on increasing their salaries: they receive an increase due to indexation of pensions.

As Petr Gusyatnikov, senior managing partner of the law firm PG Partners, pointed out, any law has workarounds, the question is who uses it and how often. The fact that such a loophole still exists indicates that it is used infrequently and the phenomenon is not widespread. It makes no sense for the authorities to rewrite the law in order to close “bypass” routes for a tiny percentage of citizens. Now, for the most part, it is easier for both citizens and employers to comply with the law than to solve problems associated with its non-compliance, the lawyer is sure.

Moreover, if you analyze the situation, it turns out that with their tricks with dismissal, older Russians are simply getting what they are already entitled to and what they themselves have earned through years and decades of honest work.