How does the Federal Tax Service find gray salaries in a company?

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How does the Federal Tax Service find gray salaries in a company?

According to various sources, in Russia 15 million people receive "gray" salaries, and the "gray" wage fund itself is 10 trillion rubles. Such figures are given by Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

Can a tax inspectorate pass by such an amount of money from which salary taxes must be paid - 30% of the wage fund? Of course it cannot. In this article you will learn how the tax seeks gray salaries and prove non-payment of contributions.

1. Does the company pay salaries below the average level from the industry in the subject of the Russian Federation? Hm suspiciously

If the average monthly salary per employee of a company is below the average level by type of economic activity in the subject of the Russian Federation, then the tax pay attention to this.

This criterion is specified in the Concept of a system of planning tax audits. That is, if your company officially pays its employees less than other companies from your subject in the industry, then the Federal Tax Service (if there are other verification criteria) will come with an on-site audit.

It is clear that during the exit tax, there is every opportunity to find “gray” salaries and to charge additional insurance taxes. However, after field audits, these taxes will not be the taxpayer’s biggest headache, because according to statistics from the Federal Tax Service in Moscow, the field audit “costs” the company 56 million rubles.

During field inspections, the inspectorate actively conducts interrogations of company employees. It is likely that one of them will tell that he receives part of his salary officially, and part of it in an envelope.

But suppose that the on-site inspection did not reach, although the inspection has information that the company pays employees less than the industry average. What will the inspection do?

Territorial Federal Tax Service may call the director of the taxpayer for a commission to legalize the tax base. In addition to the inspectors themselves, it may include employees of the state labor inspectorate and law enforcement agencies.

At the commission, the director is asked questions, including about salaries and why they are below the industry average. The director should be ready to respond. One of the arguments may be that the size of the payment depends on the professional qualities and experience of the employee and its size is in no way connected with the statistical average salary. Inspection cannot, in fact, force a company to pay an average salary.

In our practice, there were situations when the director argued for low salaries by the fact that the company introduced a system of bonuses and bonuses, but in order to get them, employees achieve certain performance indicators. However, they do not reach them, alas. Therefore, the salary is low.

Also on the commission, you can promise (usually this promise is recorded in the minutes) to raise salaries within a few months by several thousand rubles. This promise must be fulfilled at least partially; there are situations where the manager promises to raise his salary by 3 thousand rubles for 3 months, and then another 3 thousand rubles for another 3 months. After that, the salary rises by 1.5 thousand rubles for 3 months and that’s all.

2. The FTS found a fictitious transaction in which the work was carried out by the taxpayer? How did the company pay employees?

If the counterparty did not do the work, but they were done, then someone did. Workers were attracted by the taxpayer himself, but how did he pay them?

Naturally, the work is not reflected in the company's documentation in any way (or rather, it is reflected in the contract with the counterparty, but by the terms of the task the Federal Tax Service is confident that the counterparty is fake).

The small thing is to find these workers, interrogate them and get the information that they were paid in an envelope.

How does the inspection find out who to interrogate? It depends on the situation, for example, in one of the cases, the inspectorate analyzed data on electronic passes to the construction site. So I found officially non-employed workers who at the interrogations told the inspectors everything that they wanted to hear.

3. Monthly dividends? Very suspicious because it looks like a salary

Dividends are not subject to insurance premiums, so company management is sometimes tempted to pay dividends to founders every month and transfer this money to employees “in an envelope”. If the inspection proves that it was so, then dividends will be reclassified as salaries and accrued salary taxes.

In this case, the inspection will pay attention to the size of dividends and the wage fund. Too big dividends will cause suspicions.

4. Did the dissatisfied employee “trick” about “gray” salaries? Wait for exit

In our practice, a message by an employee or a former employee about the payment of a “gray” salary to the State Labor Inspectorate, the prosecutor’s office or the Federal Tax Service has a high chance of attracting a field tax audit to the company.

Therefore, it is worth trying to part with your employees for good.

5. Conclusions

The Federal Tax Service administers insurance premiums from January 1, 2017. This function was transferred to the tax authorities because the FIU was doing very poorly in collecting insurance taxes, while the Federal Tax Service makes it much better to recover money from a business.

In our opinion, insurance premiums are the second most important area that the Federal Tax Service pays attention to after VAT audits.

The tax system knows many schemes for evading insurance premiums. Therefore, those companies that would like to save on fees should approach this issue very carefully and strictly within the framework of the law.