Who to get increase to pension?
About 800,000 retired people in Tatarstan are to receive pensions under the new rules since January
In January, about 800,000 Tatarstan pensioners will receive pensions calculated in a new way — in accordance with the amendments made in October this year to the pension legislation. As a result, as promised, pensions are to increase by an average of 1,000 rubles. Why will almost 200,000 Tatarstan pensioners have to wait for an increase until April and how changes in the legislation will affect the pensions of working pensioners — deputy governor of the Pension Fund for the Republic of Tatarstan Elena Polyakova told on 11 December at a press conference. Read the details in the material of Realnoe Vremya.
Size matters
As reported by Deputy Governor of the Pension Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan Elena Polyakova, the law on amendments to the pension legislation defined the procedure for calculation and indexation of pensions for the next 6 years — from 2019 to 2024 inclusive.
The recalculation will affect about 800,000 non-working Tatarstan recipients of non-contributory pensions (1,147 million pensioners in the republic). But not all of them can count on the repeatedly promised increase to pension in one thousand rubles. The amount of indexation, as before, depends on the size of the pension. Therefore, the ''rich'' pensioners who receive more than 15,000 rubles will get rich by more than 1,000 rubles, and the poor will receive a smaller increase: with a pension of 10,000 rubles the increase will be about 700 rubles.
The minimum pension in Tatarstan in 2018 is 8,232 rubles. To be more precise, it is the size of the regional subsistence minimum of a pensioner, and if a pension is lower, the difference is paid to the pensioner from the regional budget. According to Elena Polyakova, there are very few such pensioners in the region, and after indexation in the new year they will be even less, because for many of them it will cover the difference between the pension and the subsistence minimum. The fact that the real income of this most needy part of the pension recipients will not grow remained outside the press conference. On this occasion, the deputy governor of the Pension Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan philosophically noted that the Pension Fund does not make its own decisions on the size of the pension, but only executes the law.
The increase is small and not occurring in the near future
Elena Polyakova reminded that working pensioners should not expect the recalculation of their pensions, however, after leaving on the deserved rest ''they will be returned all the missing coefficients and indexations over the period after dismissal.''
Answering the question of the correspondent of Realnoe Vremya, Polyakova said that on 1 August for more than 200,000 working Tatarstan pensioners the pensions are to be adjusted basing on the amount of insurance deductions transferred to the Pension Fund by the employer for the previous year of work. She noted that ''this is a very individual increase'', but the amount by which the pensions of working pensioners grow will be insignificant:
''Since the law on insurance pensions provides for a restriction in all cases. Even if the pensioner earned a large salary and the employer, respectively, transferred for him a large amount of insurance deductions, the amount of the increase is limited to three pension points. Multiply 81,49 rubles by 3 — this is the maximum size of the increase. But if the pensioner has a small salary, the increase will be much less.''
In accordance with the same terms, from April 1, not January of the new year, the pension is to be indexed for approximately 80,000 Tatarstan recipients of social pensions – on disability, loss of breadwinner, etc. But the insurance pensions for disability and pensions for loss of breadwinner are to be indexed under the new rules and from 1 January.
''Offended'' mothers and entrepreneurs
It is not so profitable in practice, as it turned out, to use ''children's points'', which have been previously mentioned many times. There is no chance for a significant increase in pension, as there is no chance to get even a meager increase for children without losing working experience — just for the fact that a woman gave birth to children. Women who gave birth before 2002 and who were on parental leave are offered a choice — to take into account the time of the maternity leave in the work experience or to cut this period from the experience (and, accordingly, to lose in pension), ''taking an additional payment'' with points. Points for children are small, so that almost the only case where it makes sense to go for them in the Pension Fund is if only during the maternity leave the woman officially never worked.
Nothing comforting awaits individual entrepreneurs as well. Answering the question of Realnoe Vremya on why many individual entrepreneurs complain that the Pension Fund rejects them a pension, Elena Polyakova said that this often happens because self-employed entrepreneurs made statutory contributions not in full or as individual entrepreneurs functioned (and therefore paid) not during the period when were actually engaged in business. Therefore, they say, the total amount of contributions received in the Pension Fund is often so small that there is simply no legitimate reason to grant a pension.
Do not come for a letter of confirmation!
To top it off — on the implementation of tax benefits to pensioners, as well as persons who have reached the age when these benefits are due. Since it is also a kind of increase to pension in its own way, only in the form of tax savings.
Today, turning to the tax service, for example, with an application for exemption from the tax on the only housing, the pensioner often hears in response to the proposal to bring (in the original, with the appropriate seal) a document confirming this right. And the person is forced to make an appointment in the Pension Fund, go there for a letter of confirmation… To the question of the correspondent of Realnoe Vremya why this is happening in Tatarstan, which is one of the first in Russia began to introduce electronic document between the departments, the deputy governor of the Pension Fund for Tatarstan answered unequivocally:
''It is not necessary to go anywhere — it is necessary to demand from employees of the Federal tax agency's department to request in the Pension Fund necessary references — they are obliged to do it. Refusal is grounds for a complaint…''
The complaint, as the correspondent of Realnoe Vremya found out, can be submitted to two departments — the higher tax authority and the prosecutor's office.