Types of liability of accountants for incorrect payroll
Accounting errors, as well as deliberate violations in maintaining records, may entail liability for the person engaged in accounting. In this case, such liability may be:
- Administrative;
- Tax;
- Criminal;
- Material;
- Disciplinary;
- Civil law.
The level of responsibility is established depending on the immediate causes of the error and the severity of the resulting consequences. Moreover, in many cases, several types of liability may be applied simultaneously to an accountant who made a mistake in calculating wages. For example, administrative for the fact of an offense, disciplinary as a punishment from the employer, and material as compensation for damage caused by one’s actions.
Basic accounting errors when paying wages
The responsibility to ensure the payment and accounting of wages may lie either fully or partially directly with the accountant. At the same time, making calculations and the presence of errors in them can lead to various liability of such an employee both before the law and before the direct recipients of wages, the employer or the organization with which he cooperates under a civil contract. The most common errors related to payroll are:
Failure to comply with the requirements of labor legislation and the employment contract, including if the employment contract stipulates wage payment rules that do not comply with the law.- Payment of wages during business trips instead of average earnings or instead of vacation pay.
- Violation of the procedure for payments to dismissed employees.
- Failure to meet deadlines for payment of due salaries, advances and vacation pay.
- Lack of compensation payments for delayed wages.
- Failure to comply with the procedure for issuing settlement documentation to employees, violation of such procedure, as well as failure to comply with the established form of the sheet.
- Inaccurate or incorrect calculation of average earnings.
- Incorrect implementation of required deductions from wages.
- Overpayment of wages beyond what is required.
Each of these cases should be considered in more detail.
What the law says
The terms of remuneration for each employee are determined in an employment or civil law contract. The employer is obliged to make payments established in the agreement in full and within the agreed period.
If the earnings were not calculated in full or the employee is overpaid, then the employer has the right to recalculate. Moreover, the employer will have to pay the underpaid money in any case. But the overpayment may not be collected. This decision is made by the employer on an individual basis.
The following grounds for recount are established by law:
- counting error;
- remunerations calculated at the end of the year;
- change in working conditions under the contract;
- increasing the minimum wage;
- By the tribunal's decision;
- by decision of the labor dispute commission;
- instructions from GIT inspectors;
- earnings indexation;
- downtime, failure to comply with labor standards or duties;
- unearned advances and vacations.
Each basis for recalculation has its own characteristics. Responsibility is provided for failure to comply with the requirements for recalculating wages for previous months.
Failure to comply with labor legislation and non-compliance of wages with the employment contract
If, when an accountant calculates wages, certain provisions of the employment contract are not taken into account, then the accountant may be held liable. The most common violations in this case are:
- Non-payment of overtime for overtime recorded in the time sheet;
- Failure to pay bonuses stipulated by the employment contract;
- Violation of the procedure for paying bonuses and other allowances.
More common cases are when an accountant acts in accordance with an employment contract, but contrary to labor laws. From the point of view of the law, the clauses and conditions of a collective or personal agreement with an employee are considered void if they contradict the provisions of the Labor Code. However, the following errors are often common:
- Failure to indicate in the employment contract the tariff rate of salary and a note that payment is regulated by the staffing table or other internal regulations of the enterprise;
- The difference in wages of employees in the same positions and with the same qualifications is considered unacceptable, even if the employee is on a probationary period;
- Failure to pay bonuses to employees working part-time or under fixed-term employment contracts for a similar amount of work in similar positions.
Important fact
If such a payment procedure was established directly by the manager, the accountant is obliged to independently write a statement in his name about the presence of errors in the calculations, and if the manager refuses to keep accounts in accordance with labor legislation, the accountant should require written orders from management for each specific case of payroll or bonuses.
