Ekaterina Zolotareva
Specialist of the business development department
At the beginning of 2020, changes were made to the procedure for accrual and payment of medical sick leave certificates. And in connection with the spread of COVID-19 in Russia, the procedure for calculating sick leave allowances has changed again, however it is temporarily. Acsour experts have prepared a major report for you about changes in the procedure for accrual and drawing up of sick lists: in the first part, we have brought together the main innovations of the current year.
In general, the procedure for calculating payments for temporary disability leave remains the same. The main change is considered to be an increase in the amount of the minimum allowance, based on the increase in the minimum living wage. In 2020, according to the order of the Ministry of Labour of Russia, it is 12,310 rubles. Therefore, the lower limit for calculating the allowance in question is 398.79 rubles per working day.
The maximum amount of payments for sick lists has also increased – 2,301.37 rubles. Now, when accruing monetary allowance for sick leave in 2020, it is necessary to focus on the previous two years.
The first stage in calculating the amount of temporary disability allowance in 2020 is to determine the average daily earnings of an employee. Payments to an employee for the last two years (2018 and 2019) are taken as the basis for calculation. When performing the calculation, the following should be taken into account:
The second stage determines the amount of the daily allowance, depending on the employee’s length of employment.
If an employee has been working for more than 8 years, they are accrued 100% of their average earnings. If you have from 5 to 8 years of length of employment, the amount of the accrued allowance is equal to 80% of the average earnings. For less than 5 years of length of employment, an employee will receive a payment concerning sick leave equal to 60% of average earnings. If the length of employment is less than six months, the temporary disability allowance is accrued based on the minimum living wage.
Please note that from April 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020, the length of employment is not taken into account when calculating the amount of the daily allowance.
After we have received the amount of the daily allowance, the final stage is to calculate the total amount of the allowance, according to the number of days spent on sick leave.
Special attention should be paid to checking the sick list, since it is a strictly accountable document, according to which the company receives proceeds from the Social Insurance Service for paying an employee’s sick leave. If a counterfeit is identified, the employer will not be reimbursed.
There are several options for checking the authenticity of the provided document:
Federal insurance service. There are two ways to check the authenticity of a document using the Social Insurance Service: check the identifying number of the sick list or check the document number against the stolen numbers of medical sick leave certificates.
In the first case, the company should send an application to determine the authenticity of the sick list. When submitting an application, the employer specifies the full name of the employee and the name of the health care institution where the document was issued. It takes about 1-2 weeks to consider the request.
In the second case, the employer can independently check the authenticity of the document through the website of the Social Insurance Service, which contains information about the stolen identifying numbers of sick lists. The complexity of the method consits in the relevance of the information – the data is updated once every one or two months.
Health care institution. A request to check the authenticity of the sick list to the health care institution that issued the document is sent on behalf of the employer on the company’s letterhead. Please note that when sending a request, it is necessary to exclude those health care institutions that do not issue sick lists, such as Primary Health Care Centres, blood transfusion stations and sanatoriums.
It is possible to reduce the number of submissions of false sick lists or reduce the number of errors when drawing up paper documents by using electronic medical sick leave certificates.
In order to transfer employees to electronic sick lists, initially it is necessary to register the company as an insured of the Social Insurance Service. It is possible to do this by following a few steps:
Step one. Registration of a company on the state services portal. For successful registration, the Head of the company should preliminarily confirm the profile on the state services portal and make an electronic digital signature of the organization.
Step two. After the authorization, it is necessary to register in the account of an insured of the Social Insurance Service.
Step three. To add to the personal account of the insured of the Social Insurance Service the employee responsible for the electronic sick lists.
Electronic sick lists are issued at the health care institution where the employee of the company applied. Opening and closing of the sick leave is carried out in the polyclinic by the attending physician. The employee is given only the number of the document that should be reported to the employer for accrual and payment of allowance.
Drawing up of sick lists is a labour-intensive process that requires a personalized approach: it is necessary to take into account the features of each employee’s work and the specifics of the organization as a whole. Legislation in this matter is changing rapidly, which is why it is necessary to understand how it works in order to perform the work correctly.
Employees of the Acsour Payroll Department undertake the entire cycle of calculating temporary disability allowances from the process of accruing and calculating of sick leaves to submitting statutory reportings to the Federal Insurance Service and the Tax Service. Our experts can help you with advice or at any stage, for example, when the company switches to the electronic sick lists system, including when the company connects to the electronic interaction system.
Specialist of the business development department
