Payment of sick leave in 2021

General provisions

The current regulatory framework regulates the following grounds for issuing sick leave:

illness or injury that led to temporary disability;

quarantine
installation of a prosthesis
treatment in a sanatorium
pregnancy

Registration of sick leave in 2021 is carried out within the established procedure:

Mandatory examination by a doctor, which confirms the basis for issuing the sheet.
Based on the results of the examination, the doctor can issue a sick leave certificate, which is opened from the date of application to the medical institution.

The period for which sick leave is issued depends on several parameters. The deadline, which is issued at the medical institution, is 30 days. After the first visit, sick leave is issued for a period that cannot exceed 10 days. After which the validity period can be extended as a result of a repeat visit. In addition, a special commission can extend sick leave up to 12 months if the illness or injury has serious consequences.

Depending on the reason for filing sick leave in 2021, the current standards determine the following maximum periods:

care for a child in case of illness - from 30 to 60 days depending on age
disability – 5 months
pregnancy – 140 days

Sick leave payments in 2021: essential features

Payment for sick leave in 2021 is made from two sources: employer funds (first 3 days) and Social Insurance Fund (starting from the 4th day). If the reason for registration is child care, then financing comes exclusively from the Social Insurance Fund.

In the following cases, the employee will not be able to obtain sick leave:

the established hospital regime is violated
activities are carried out within the framework of a contract
if the injury was sustained as a result of an unlawful act
if an employee is suspended from performing duties or carries out actions without appropriate permissions
if sick leave is issued after the end of the illness

Registration of an electronic sick leave certificate from July 1, 2017

Federal Law No. 86-FZ determines that medical organizations in all regions must issue sick leave electronically from July. Technically, both formats are valid today: paper and electronic (electronic registration occurs with the consent of the employee). The data immediately becomes available to FSS (social insurance) specialists and the employer.

The employing organization does not directly participate in the transfer of electronic personal information. The organization fills its own part of the sick leave.

Attention! Registration in your personal account on the Social Insurance Fund website and receiving electronic health insurance at the initial stage of introducing an electronic form of sick leave are not mandatory for employers today.

How to transfer an electronic sick leave certificate to the Social Insurance Fund?

Obtaining new information about electronic certificates of incapacity for work (ELS) and their details is available to the organization through its personal account at cabinets.fss ru.
In your personal account, you will be able to receive a notification about the receipt of an electronic sick leave and electronically fill out the “To be completed by the employer” section.

The policyholder’s personal electronic account performs the following functions:

receiving and viewing data from a new electronic health record closed in a medical institution;
filling out information by the policyholder;
export of ELN data to an xml file with the possibility of subsequent loading of this file into the policyholder’s software for creating and signing registers for sending to the Social Insurance Fund;
search by last name, SNILS and viewing registers submitted to the FSS;
search and view benefits by status paid to the Social Insurance Fund as part of direct payments;
viewing and uploading a list of errors in the benefit registry to an xml file;
viewing notices generated by employees of the Social Insurance Fund when working with the register;
submitting an application to register for a consultation appointment with the regional office of the Social Insurance Fund on issues of direct payments.

Important!. This year, employers have the right to work as before, without opening the policyholder’s personal account and without connecting to electronic exchange. Electronic sick leave will not be available to them, since social insurance employees will not be able to find the policyholder in a single information database.

If the clinic and the employer participate in an electronic exchange, the employee will be able to decide whether to take sick leave - paper or electronic.

Mandatory details are:

information containing the employee’s INN and SNILS,
name of the employing organization,
information about average earnings for calculating benefits,
doctors' signatures,
electronic seal of the institution.

Individual entrepreneurs do not have to connect to the exchange system. There are no fines for the fact that the company has not switched to electronic sick leave.

Nuances of calculations and payments

Calculation of sick leave in 2021 is carried out according to the following algorithm:

Fixation of the total salary that the employee received over the last two years
Calculation of average daily income. To do this, the total income is divided into 730 days (for a leap year - 731 days)
The result obtained is multiplied by the number of working days during which the employee was on sick leave
The length of service coefficient is applied, which is determined based on the following principles:

if the length of service is up to 6 months, then for each month of sick leave the employee will receive more than 1 minimum wage
for 3-5 years of experience K 0.6 is applied
for 6-8 years of experience K 0.8 is applied
if the experience exceeds 8 years, K 1.0 is applied

The maximum amount of payment to an employee during the year cannot exceed RUB 270,450.

Calculation example

The total amount of the employee’s salary for the last two years is 860 thousand rubles. In this case, the work experience reaches 9 years and sick leave is issued for 10 days. In this case, the payment amount will be:

860,000 / 730 x 10 x 1 = 11,780.82 rubles.

The amount calculated for sick leave is paid after the employee returns to the workplace at the next salary payment. Personal income tax will be withheld from this amount.

In addition, it is worth considering the following nuances when calculating sick leave in 2021:

If the injury was sustained at work or the employee suffered an occupational disease, then the sick leave payment will be 270 thousand rubles
If an employee falls ill during vacation, he must contact a medical facility. In this case, sick leave will be open from the first day of going to work or transferred to another day in agreement with the employer
Sick leave for pregnancy or child care is paid exclusively from the Social Insurance Fund. In this case, the duration of sick leave is regulated at the legislative level.
If an employee is a part-time worker and works in several companies at once, then he will be able to apply for sick leave in each organization
If the time interval between the termination of the employment contract and the employee’s illness is less than 30 days, then sick leave is issued with K 0.6 of the average salary at the corresponding place of work.

Payment of sick leave next year is carried out at the expense of the employer and funds from the Social Insurance Fund. To register, you will need to contact a medical institution and obtain the appropriate certificate. When calculating the payment, the following parameters are taken into account:

total income for the last two years
number of days on sick leave
work experience

Electronic sick leave – how it works for the patient

To issue a certificate of incapacity for work, as before, the patient must first of all contact a doctor at an accredited medical organization that has the right to issue sick leave. The provision of qualified medical care is accompanied by the preparation of a sick leave form, which is generated in a special electronic system and, after certification with an enhanced signature (EDS), is transferred to the general insurance database.

The patient no longer needs to run around offices, wait in lines in order to collect various signatures of responsible persons. You also don’t have to worry about how the document is filled out - this is very important, because the presence of errors and inaccuracies leads to a refusal to assign benefit amounts. All that is required is to obtain an electronic number, which is communicated to the employer’s administration when leaving for work. The company takes on further actions - it checks the information, fills out the section for calculating benefits, and transfers its part of the data to the Social Insurance Fund.

Switching to work via electronic health insurance eliminates the need for employees of organizations to notify company administrations about the fact of illness. If a person does not go to his workplace, the personnel officer or other authorized person of the employer can enter the unified system and obtain information about the opening of sick leave. For its part, an individual, having access to the database, can easily check the correctness of the calculation of benefits.

Calculation of sick leave: fundamental principles and changes in 2021

The calculation of sick leave is based on a number of key rules that every accountant should follow. These include the following:

Payment for sick leave in 2021 in case of illness or injury is made from 2 sources: the first 3 days are paid from the employer’s funds, the remaining days from the social insurance fund. If sick leave is issued to care for a sick relative, due to quarantine, or the need to undergo rehabilitation in a sanatorium, then it is paid in full from the Social Insurance Fund.
Calculation of sick leave is carried out on calendar days falling on the full period of illness, with the exception of days when the employee was suspended from official duties and was not entitled to wages for these days. A list of such exceptions can be found in Article 9 of Law No. 255-FZ of December 29, 2006.
The amount of disability benefits payable is calculated based on the employee’s average salary. This indicator is determined for the previous 2 years. If a person has been working at a given place of work recently, then the data provided by his previous employers is taken into account. To calculate average earnings, the summed salary for 2 years is divided by 730.
The amount of the benefit is directly related to the length of the insurance period. If it does not exceed 5 years, sick leave is calculated based on 60% of average earnings. For more than 5 years of experience, but not more than 8, the ratio of 80% of the average salary is applied. And finally, with more than 8 years of experience, the amount of sick leave is equal to average earnings. Moreover, starting from the 11th day of sick leave, benefits are accrued in the amount of ½ of the average earnings, no matter how long the insurance period you have.
The calculation of sick leave in 2021 is based on all payments that were made in favor of the employee and from which the employer transferred insurance premiums for the previous 2 years.

As you can see, changes in the calculation of sick leave in 2021 are practically insignificant. To illustrate the application of these principles, we will try to show how to calculate sick leave in 2017 using a specific example.

Let’s assume that a certain Marina Nikolaevna Ivanova, having 7 years of insurance experience, fell ill between January 16 and January 25, 2021. Accordingly, guided by the above rules, to calculate average earnings we need the period 2015 and 2021. According to accounting data, her total salary for 2015 was 480,000 rubles, and for 2021 - 520,000 rubles. Thus, over the previous 2 years she earned a total of 1,000,000 rubles. Please note that this amount takes into account all payments in favor of M.N. Ivanova, for which the company where she works transferred insurance contributions to extra-budgetary funds.

So, the average earnings of Ivanova M.N. is 1,369.86 rubles (1,000,000/730). Considering that her insurance experience is more than 5 but less than 8 years, we use a coefficient of 0.8 (80%). Thus, to calculate benefits for 10 calendar days of sick leave, average earnings are used at the rate of 1,095.89 rubles. (RUB 1,369.86 x 80%). Accordingly, payment of sick leave to Ivanova M.N. will be 10,958.90 rubles. (RUB 1,095.89 x 10 calendar days).

It is very convenient to use a free online calculator for calculating patients, which is offered by various services on the Internet. By entering the information necessary for the calculation, within a few seconds you will receive a calculation of the benefit amount in accordance with all current rules and restrictions, as well as links to legislative acts.

Interesting facts about sick leave

There are several interesting facts about sick leave abroad that greatly distinguish the foreign benefit system from the Russian one:

There are no sick days in the USA. The fact of payment for a specific number of days is stated in the contract. Thus, 38% of Americans remain without temporary disability benefits.
In Israel, only 18 working days spent on sick leave are paid per year. If the employee has not been sick all year, then these days are postponed. But you cannot accumulate more than 90 days. In addition, the first day of illness is not paid, for the 2nd and 3rd days only 50% is paid. Sick leave will be fully compensated starting from the 4th day.
Germany provides its citizens with the opportunity to get sick for 3 days without taking sick leave. This fact does not affect their income in any way.

The system for calculating sick leave in the Russian Federation is within the strict framework provided for by Federal Law No. 255-FZ of December 29, 2006 “On compulsory social insurance in case of temporary disability and in connection with maternity.” Thus, in order to be guaranteed to receive paid sick leave, you need to follow the rules.

How is sick leave paid in 2021 if earnings are less than the minimum wage?

It happens that an employee who finds himself on sick leave has no earnings during the billing period, or it is extremely small, not even reaching the minimum wage. In this case, the calculation of sick leave is based precisely on the minimum wage. Let us give a corresponding example of calculating sick leave in 2017.

So, let’s assume that M.N. Ivanova, who participated in our previous calculation, did not work in the calculation period of 2015 and 2021. It is also not possible to replace these years with some others, since she was not on maternity leave, but simply did not work during these years. An employee fell ill in July 2021 for a period of 10 calendar days.

In this case, you will have to rely on the minimum wage, which will be 7,800 rubles from the second half of 2021. We calculate the average earnings by multiplying the minimum wage by 24 months and dividing by 730. Its amount will be 256.44 rubles. Now we multiply this amount by 80% based on the existing insurance experience and get the amount of daily earnings for calculating sick leave of 205.15 rubles. Accordingly, sick leave payment for 10 calendar days will be 2,051.50 rubles.

Calculation of sick leave: what needs to be taken into account

The employee has the right to apply for benefits within 6 months.

Having received a sick leave certificate from an employee, the employer must first make sure that he was provided with the original. Sick leave cannot be calculated based on a copy.

If the employee has just started his working career, that is, he has very little insurance coverage, the benefit is calculated based on the minimum wage. There are other cases when benefits are paid based on the minimum wage: if an employee violated the regime prescribed by the attending physician without good reason, did not appear on time for an examination by a doctor or for a medical and social examination, if sick leave was received due to alcohol, narcotic, toxic intoxication. Since from July 1, 2021, the minimum wage increased to 7,800 rubles, the amount of the benefit calculated from the minimum wage has changed.

If an employee quits his job and, within 30 calendar days after his dismissal, turns to his former employer with a request to pay for benefits, then his request must be granted.

What are the limits on disability benefits?

Current legislation limits the maximum amount of average earnings, based on which benefits are determined. It is stipulated that the amount that serves as the basis for calculating benefits for each year should not exceed the limit of the base for calculating insurance premiums in the same year. Considering that in 2015 this limit was 670,000.00 rubles, in 2016 - 718,000 rubles, dividing the amount for 2 years by 730, we get the average earnings limit for 2017 at the level of 1901.37 rubles. The FSS simply will not accept payments for a larger amount.