Penalty for failure to submit SZV-M in 2021

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Insurance premiums

Current legislation obliges legal entities, individual entrepreneurs and some other economic entities to pay insurance premiums allocated for the purposes of pension, medical and social insurance. They are accrued for each employee who works in an organization or on the basis of an employment or civil law contract.

However, payment of insurance premiums is accompanied by the mandatory submission of reporting documents, in particular SZV M, the procedure for which is determined by the regulatory authorities. It should be noted that provision of the report is the responsibility of the employer. If this does not happen, the enterprise is liable to pay a fine to the Pension Fund for late submission of SZV M.

What errors in the report lead to penalties?

SZV-M is the main reporting form submitted to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation. The corresponding obligation is assigned to the following categories of insurance premium payers:

legal entities;
individual entrepreneurs;
persons operating as privately practicing lawyers and notaries.

The SZV-M report form itself was approved by the Pension Fund of Russia at the end of 2016 and has not undergone any changes since then. At its core, SZV-M is a personalized report containing information about persons for whom an organization or individual entrepreneur pays contributions.

These include:

employees with whom there is an employment relationship;
citizens to whom the payer paid remuneration under a civil law contract.

This rule also applies to foreign citizens working in the Russian Federation. However, this does not apply to highly qualified specialists who have employment contracts for a certain period. This is due to the fact that this category of workers is not subject to compulsory pension insurance.

The SZV-M report includes the following information:

information about the policyholder (name, legal form, contact details, registration number in the Pension Fund of Russia);
information about the insured persons (full name, SNILS, INN).

The form must be certified by the signature of the manager.

For errors associated with non-compliance with the deadlines, procedure or form of reporting, the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation imposes monetary fines on the organization.

Let's name the most typical and frequently occurring errors associated with submitting this report to the Pension Fund:

Submitting documents after the deadline . The law establishes that the SZV-M report must be submitted monthly. It does not matter whether the organization is active or not. It should be noted that submitting a report later than the due date and not submitting it at all from the point of view of the law are identical offenses.
Errors in filling out the document . False information, lack of information and other inaccuracies in the document are considered as a failed report, for which financial sanctions are imposed.
Incorrect report submission form. It has been established that organizations and individual entrepreneurs can submit documents to the Pension Fund both electronically and in printed form. However, submitting paper documentation is possible only if the number of insured persons at the enterprise is less than 25 people. If the number of employees is larger, then the submission of SZV-M is allowed only in the form of an electronic document, confirmed by the enhanced electronic signature of the manager.

Attention! It should be noted that, depending on the specific situation, an organization or individual entrepreneur has the opportunity to challenge the Pension Fund’s fine in court.

What the law says

Responsibility for failure to submit SZV-M is regulated by Article 17 of Law No. 27-FZ “On accounting in the OPS system”. Thus, companies and individual entrepreneurs are required to pay an amount of 500 rubles. Moreover, for each employee who had to be indicated in the SZV-M form. And these are all persons who have signed an employment or civil contract with the employer.

Let us note that the legislation provides for equal liability for failure to submit the SZV-M and violation of deadlines in relation to it.

Also see “Penalties for late submission of SZV-M: 2021”.

In 2021, these reports are submitted for the previous month no later than the 15th day of each current month.

For more details, see “SZV-M in 2017: new deadlines for submitting initial, corrective and updated reports.”

A fine is also imposed for entering incomplete and/or incorrect data into the report. Such cases include, for example:

an error made in the TIN, SNILS;
absence of full name

Moreover, the amount of the fine in the situations considered is the same: 500 rubles for 1 individual included in the SZV-M.

Use the electronic resource “Find out your/other people’s TIN”, which is offered by the official website of the Federal Tax Service of Russia. It will help you avoid some mistakes when filling out the report form for insured persons.

Let us note that since 2021, Article 17 of the said Law No. 27-FZ has been supplemented with a new requirement: to comply with the method of submitting the reports under consideration. Thus, enterprises with no more than 24 employees have the right to submit a document in printed form. The rest must report electronically. For violation, the penalty amount is 1000 rubles.

Also see “As of January 8, 2017, the electronic format for sending SZV-M has been updated.”

Penalties for late submission

It has been established that the monetary sanction for late submission of the documentation in question is 500 rubles for each insured person.

To determine the amount of the penalty, it is necessary to multiply this amount by the number of persons who should have been indicated in the report. For example, if an organization employs 20 people, then 500 * 20 = 10,000. Thus, you will have to pay 10 thousand rubles.

It should be noted that for enterprises with hundreds or thousands of employees, the amount of the penalty can be quite significant.

Penalty for late submission of SZV-M

If the policyholder is late in submitting information in the SZV-M form or does not provide it at all, the Pension Fund will hold him accountable. Article 17 of the Federal Law of April 1, 1996 No. 27-FZ (hereinafter referred to as Law No. 27-FZ) provides for a fine of 500 rubles for late delivery of SZV-M for each insured person for whom individual information is not provided.

Example 1. Brand LLC employs 500 people. The Company's accountant submitted the SZV-M for March 2021 after the deadline. As a result, the company was fined 250,000 rubles. (= 5000 people x 500 rubles). Agree, the amount is impressive. And the larger the organization, the greater the fine.

Officials for this violation (directors and chief accountants) can also be fined under administrative article 15.33.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation in the amount of 300 to 500 rubles.

Let us remind you that from this year the deadline for submitting the SZV-M has changed. If in 2021 it was set on the 10th day of the month following the reporting month, then starting from January 1, 2021 it was increased by 5 days - until the 15th day (clause 2.2 of Article 11 of Law No. 27-FZ). At the same time, the procedure for postponing the deadline for submitting information about insured persons in the SZV-M form is regulated by Article 193 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. The Pension Fund drew attention to this in a letter dated December 28, 2016 No. 08-19/19045.

You can find out exactly when you need to take the SZV-M in 2017 from the consultation “SZV-M: due date in 2016-2017.”

Is it possible to avoid a fine for late submission of SZV-M ? If the policyholder is actually late in submitting the report, then most likely it will not be possible to evade punishment. But it is quite possible to reduce the amount of the fine imposed for collection. But this will have to be done through the courts.

The fact is that Law No. 27-FZ does not provide for any circumstances mitigating the liability of a slow policyholder. So the Pension Fund is unlikely to reduce the fine. Although you can try your luck by contacting the higher authority of the Foundation.

Article 18 of Law No. 27-FZ allows you to appeal the decision of the Pension Fund of Russia to impose penalties in court. To do this, you need to write a statement of claim to the arbitration court at the location of the branch of the Pension Fund that issued the fine, and ask to reduce the amount of the monetary penalty or cancel it altogether (clause 5 of the reasoning part of the Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of January 19, 2016 No. 2-P).

Judicial practice shows that companies manage to reduce the amount of the fine for SZV-M tens and even hundreds of times (decision of the Arbitration Court of the Primorsky Territory dated September 15, 2016 in case No. A51-15102/2016, decision of the Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk Region dated September 12, 2016 No. A60-33366/2016, decision of the Arbitration Court of the Orenburg Region dated 09.09.2016 No. A47-6249/2016, etc.). To win your case, use the following arguments:

the offense was committed for the first time;
the budget was not affected;
insignificant reporting delay;
lack of intent in the violation;
technical failure in the computer, etc.

How to challenge illegal penalties

Based on the identified violation, Pension Fund employees draw up an act to hold the organization accountable, after which a demand for payment of a fine is issued, which is sent to the policyholder. The latter has the right to submit written objections to the decision to prosecute. If their consideration is unsatisfactory, representatives of the policyholder may go to court to resolve the issue of reducing the amount of sanctions or canceling them completely.

Reference! A pension fund can also initiate litigation. This is due to the fact that forced collection of funds from the accounts of insurance premium payers is possible only on the basis of a court decision.

How the Pension Fund will collect a fine for SZV-M in 2021

If the Pension Fund imposes a fine on the policyholder for SZV-M, and he does not pay it on time or does not pay in full, then the “pensioners” will not forcibly collect it from the violator’s accounts, as they could have done in 2021, but should will go to court. This procedure is provided for in Article 17 of Law No. 27-FZ (as amended by Federal Law No. 250-FZ dated July 3, 2016).

By the way, to pay the fine for SZV-M in 2021, use KBK 392 1 1600 140.

How to pay in 2021

To pay the pension fund fine for errors related to the procedure for submitting the SZV-M form, the organization needs to issue a payment order.

Funds are paid according to the details of the Pension Fund branch to which the organization or individual entrepreneur usually submits documents and pays insurance premiums. Accordingly, if there is a demand, the details of the department that submitted it are used.

As a general rule, the requirement must be satisfied within 15 days , however, it itself may indicate other deadlines for fulfilling the relevant obligation.

The details of the PFR branch are usually indicated in the requirement itself. If there is no such information in it, then you can find the details on the official website of the Pension Fund.

When filling out a payment order, special attention should be paid to choosing the correct budget classification code (BCC). So, for delays or errors in the SZV-M the following BCC is entered:

39211607090066000140.

The purpose of the payment shall indicate the circumstances put forward as justification for the Pension Fund's request.

Non-standard situations that arise when filling out the SZV-M form

Let's look into situations that are non-standard for such cases, which are why policyholders have most of the questions.

The main principle when deciding whether to include information about individuals in the SZV-M is the following:

individuals work in an organization under employment contracts or GPC agreements, author's orders, publishing license agreements and other agreements listed in the form itself;
the validity of such contracts falls on the reporting period (separately or in aggregate: concluded, continue to operate, terminated in such a period);
payments under contracts in favor of individuals may potentially be subject to insurance contributions to the Pension Fund (Clause 1, Article 7 of the Law “On Compulsory Pension Insurance” dated December 15, 2001 No. 167-FZ; Clause 2.2 of Article 11 of the Law “On Personalized Accounting” dated 04/01/1996 No. 27-FZ).

the fact that there were no payments to an individual in the reporting period if there were such accruals to him;
an employee being on sick leave, on maternity leave or in similar situations;
the employee is on vacation (including vacation at his own expense in the absence of activity in the organization);
the presence in the organization of only a manager (who is the sole founder), with whom neither an employment contract nor GPC agreements have been concluded.

Such features of concluding contracts with an individual, such as part-time work / combining professions, also do not matter.

Read what mistakes accountants make when filling out SZV-M in the material “The most common mistakes in SZV-M”.

The only people not included in the form are foreign citizens - highly qualified specialists temporarily staying in the Russian Federation who are not insured in the compulsory pension insurance system (Article 7 of Law No. 167-FZ of December 15, 2001).

IMPORTANT! From the above it follows: a report in the SZV-M form cannot be zero (with an empty table).

Read about one of the non-standard situations that arise when submitting reports in the article “Should I submit SZV-M to the manager - the sole founder?”

Reducing the fine

Current legislation does not provide for a reduction in the amount of the fine for failure to submit the SZV-M due to mitigating circumstances. However, this does not mean that the fine cannot be reduced in any way.

An individual entrepreneur or an employing company has every right to contact the judicial inspectorate at the location of the branch of the Pension Fund that issued the fine, with a request to reduce the amount of the fine and invalidate the Fund’s decision. As mitigating circumstances, one can indicate the first commission of such a violation, a small number of days of delay.

Purpose of reporting

In order to monitor information about working pensioners every month, the Pension Fund of Russia authorities introduced the SZV-M reporting form. The introduction of this report allowed retired employees not to independently provide data about their work to the Pension Fund. This responsibility now lies with the employer.

Employers and customers must submit this form by the 15th day of the month following the reporting month. If the submission deadline falls on a weekend, the form must be submitted on the next working day.

If the number of people working in the company is more than twenty-five, the report must be submitted in electronic format. It must be certified with a qualified digital signature.