How to avoid a fine for late submission of SZV-M in 2020

The legislative framework

The penalty for not submitting the SZV-M report on time is regulated by Law No. 27-FZ of April 1, 2016 “On individual (personalized) accounting ...” in Art. 17, which states that each employer, if the SZV-M report is not submitted on time or is not provided in full, is subject to a financial penalty equal to 500 rubles for each employee.

At the same time, paragraph 5 of the reasoning section of the resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation No. 2-P dated January 19, 2016 sets out the basis for reducing the amount of penalties.

A fine for failure to report SZV-M in 2020 can be imposed not only on the institution, but also on the head of the company or other official responsible for reporting and providing correct information. In this option, the amount of collection can range from 300 to 500 rubles, and if electronic reporting is disrupted, the fine can be 1000 rubles.

How the Pension Fund will collect fines in 2020

The procedure for collecting fines for late submission of SZV-M and for failure to comply with the procedure for submitting a report is described in Article 17 of Federal Law No. 27-FZ of April 1, 1996. The procedure for collecting fines consists of several stages. So, in particular, an act will be drawn up. Then you will be required to pay a fine for late submission of the SZV-M. It will need to be paid within 10 calendar days from the date of receipt. Or, a longer period may be set for payment of the fine directly in the requirement itself. You will need to pay the fine for late submission of SZV-M in 2020 at KBK 392 1 1600 140. It has not changed.

In 2020, PFR units have the right to collect any fines for SZV-M exclusively in court. This is directly stated in Article 17 of the Federal Law dated 04/01/1996 No. 27-FZ (as amended by the Federal Law dated 07/03/2016 No. 250-FZ). Pension Fund authorities do not have the right to write off fines for SZV-M directly from bank accounts. Accordingly, apply the form of the decision on collection from accounts (2-PFR), approved by the Decree of the Melting of the Pension Fund of July 29. 2020 No. 684p, they shouldn’t either.

It is worth noting that in 2020, the PFR authorities actually had the right to write off fines for SZV-M in a pre-trial manner and write off fines directly from the accounts of payers. This possibility was provided for in Article 17 of the Federal Law of April 1, 1996 No. 27-FZ. However, since 2020, the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation does not have such an opportunity.

What can they be fined for?

Form SZV-M is submitted every month to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation by all institutions and individual entrepreneurs who employ employees who receive wages, including under GPC agreements.
You can receive a fine in 2020 for the SZV-M report for a number of reasons:

For overdue reporting deadline SZV-M.
For errors in reporting (if the full name, SNILS, TIN of working personnel are filled out incorrectly).
For the incorrect form of the submitted SZV-M report.

Note. In 2020, an institution may be subject to a new financial penalty for SZV-M, even if it submitted reports on time and without errors.

So, if a company or individual entrepreneur employs 25 or more people, a report in the SZV-M form must be sent only in electronic form. Failure to comply with this requirement is subject to financial penalties.
At the same time, if the company employs less than 25 people, the company’s management has the right to decide on the form for sending SZV-M reports: paper or electronic.

Cancellation form SZV-M - how to fill out

Filling out the SZV-M cancellation form has two features compared to the original one:

in paragraph 3, instead of the code “ref”, “cancel” is indicated;
the main table of the report (clause 4) contains information only on those persons whose data is removed from the original form; if this data is shown with an error in the original report, then it should be entered with the same error in the canceling form.

For other report parameters, the same filling procedure applies as for the original form:

clause 1 reflects the data of the reporting entity (PFR registration number, name, INN, KPP);
clause 2 contains the month and year corresponding to the reporting period to which the corrections relate;
for clause 3, the requirement to enter the form type code remains mandatory;
in clause 4 all data related to the employee, information about whom is to be deleted from the original report, is entered;
the report is signed by an authorized person, indicating the date of completion and, if available and necessary, a seal.

Example of filling out a canceling SZV-M

Who takes SZV-M and when?

The SZV-M form is reporting that displays the earnings of each employee in the institution, and the letter “M” means that this reporting is monthly.
The document must be submitted by the institution to all insured persons with whom employment agreements have been concluded. The reporting includes working persons on maternity or paid leave, working pensioners, as well as persons dismissed during the reporting period.

Reporting is required to be submitted by each institution or individual entrepreneur. The main condition is the existence of an employment agreement. The form is required even for one enrolled employee. An exception applies if an entrepreneur works alone, without anyone on staff, that is, he works on his own.

The legislation does not provide instructions for the preparation and submission of this report. Therefore, responsibility for reporting falls on the head of the institution, and he can, by his order, appoint an official responsible for providing this reporting to the Pension Fund.

Typically, such responsibility falls on one of the accounting employees. In some institutions, the responsibility for registering and submitting SZV-M is assigned to the personnel department, since employees of this department also have information about their employees.

The responsible person is obliged to submit the SZV-M report to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation every month before the 15th day following the reporting day (clause 2.2 of Article 11 of Law No. 27-FZ of 04/01/96). If the date of submission of the report coincides with a weekend or holiday, the report is submitted on the next working day. In this version, the legislation extends the deadline for submitting reports to 5 days.

Is it possible to submit the SZV-M report early?

The legislation does not say anything about this, therefore, the form can be provided in advance, but in this case unforeseen circumstances may arise. For example, if a report was submitted on the penultimate days of the reporting month, and a person was hired or fired by the institution on the last day of the month, then the reporting will have to be submitted again.

To ensure that reporting deadlines are not missed, it is advisable that the person responsible for the SZV-M form has the following table for 2020.

Late submission of SZV-M due to error correction

The final reporting deadline for the SZV-M form in 2020 is the 15th day following the reporting period.
For late reporting to the Pension Fund of Russia, an institution or individual entrepreneur will be assessed a financial penalty on the basis of Article 17 of Law No. 27-FZ of 04/01/1996. The same penalty amount will be issued if the SZV-M form is submitted with incorrect or incomplete information, even if the errors are corrected late.

Note. The fine is imposed not for the day the report is late, but for each employee shown in the submitted report (Article 17 of Law No. 27-FZ). In this case, the fine is assessed to the institution, and not to the management.

Thus, based on this norm, the amount of the fine is 500 rubles, multiplied by the number of employees registered in the institution. For example, for 15 employees, if reporting deadlines are missed, the amount of financial penalty will be equal to: 500 x 15 = 7500 rubles.

The same amount of fine will be assessed if errors are found in the form.

Below is a table for calculating fines in 2020 for failure to submit the SZV-M form on time or with errors, when the number of employees in the institution is from 1 to 20 people.

It is important to note that financial losses may also be incurred by those responsible for untimely submission of the SZV-M report. In this case, a fine may be imposed on the manager or accountant responsible for this area of work. The fine in this option ranges from 300 to 500 rubles.

In the original report SZV-M forgot an employee

If an employee is not included in the initial SZV-M report by mistake, you need to submit a supplementary form to the Pension Fund as quickly as possible.
This will provide significant assistance in appealing the imposed penalty. To do this, you need to fill out a form including information about the missed employee. In the “Form type” – (code) column you need to write “additional”.

Penalty for such an error can be avoided if the reporting agency first discovered the error. In this option, there is no set time for providing additional data.

If an error is discovered by the inspectors, they will force the institution to correct the inaccuracy in the initial report. The time for providing additional reporting is 5 working days from the date the deficiency was identified (clause 41 of the instructions adopted by Order of the Ministry of Health and Social Development No. 987n dated December 14, 2009).

Deadlines for delivery of SZV-M

Many entrepreneurs who use hired labor are interested in the question of whether there is a specific period during which the submission of an updated form is required. If the inaccuracy was discovered by the policyholder independently, there is no deadline. Even if it were determined, the inspection authorities would still not be able to track on what day the error was found.

If incorrect information is discovered by the inspection authorities, they will be required to send a corresponding request that it be corrected immediately. There will be no fine if the entrepreneur meets the deadline.

The delay of SZV-M arose due to errors regarding several employees

Form SZV-M is a table that displays a list of insured employees indicating their full name, SNILS and Taxpayer Identification Number.
This data must be entered without errors. If even one error is detected, the report will not be accepted by Pension Fund employees. The employer is obliged to eliminate the identified deficiencies as quickly as possible and resubmit the report. Often the re-submission of the SZV-M is carried out late and in this case the Pension Fund of Russia inspector imposes a financial penalty.

Sometimes, under such circumstances, a dispute arises about the amount of the fine. The Pension Fund inspector calculates the amount of the fine based on the number of employees of the institution, but the policyholder does not agree with this, believing that the amount of the fine should be calculated based on the number of employees with corrected data.

There is no clear opinion on this issue. There is no specific explanation in the legislation. However, there is judicial practice in solving this problem, although there is also no clear solution among judges:

Some support the inspectors; as an example, we can refer to the decision of the Far Eastern Region AS No. F03-4421/2017 dated November 21, 2017.
However, there are also rulings in favor of the employer. For example, - verdict of the AS of the West Siberian region No. A27-22235/2016 dated 08.23.17.

Therefore, when faced with such a situation, the employer needs to achieve his point of view and contact the judicial authorities. Better yet, of course, is to submit the SZV-M report in a timely manner, avoiding false data and errors.

Adjustment of SZV-M

The order in which it is carried out depends on the type of error:

Code 50 . The document has not passed formal logical control, i.e. the file name does not correspond to the accepted format. The policyholder must remove errors, complete the original form, create the file, and review it.
Code 30 or 40 . The report was partially accepted; to correct it, you need to eliminate errors, fill out a supplementary form, check the file and send it to the Pension Fund.
Code 10 or 20 . The document has been submitted.

What circumstances may be considered mitigating?

For large companies with hundreds of employees, the size of the financial penalty for failure to submit the SZV-M form can be quite significant.
But even if the employer is at fault, it remains possible to reduce the amount of the penalty. To do this, you need to prove to the judges that the offense is associated with mitigating circumstances. In the practice of arbitration cases, there are a sufficient number of examples when the penalty imposed by Pension Fund inspectors was subsequently reduced to a symbolic amount. Eg:

The most “popular” mitigating reason is a short delay in reporting. Short time means a delay of no more than 16 days.
The same justification may be that the reporting failure was committed for the first time.
A mitigating reason may also be the absence of debts on contributions and other unforeseen circumstances (the employee responsible for the uniform got sick, etc.).

Among other things, the following can be considered a valid reason for preventing a report from being submitted on time:

Power outage at the company.
Program replacement or failure.

If these circumstances exist, you can not only reduce the size of the fine, but even cancel it completely.

Below is a table with examples of court orders that take into account mitigating circumstances.

How is the fine calculated?

It is not difficult to calculate the amount of the penalty for failure to report SZV-M.
To do this, it is enough to multiply the amount of 500 rubles by the number of employees filled out in the form. The resulting result from the arithmetic operation will be the amount of the fine issued to the offending institution. The calculation procedure is the same:

If there is no report at the reporting time.
If there is a delay in submitting the SZV-M form.
If mistakes are made (here a dispute may arise regarding the number of employees who must be taken into account when multiplied by 500 rubles).

Below is a table of the compliance of penalties depending on the number of employees.

Options for correcting shortcomings in SZV-M

Information about an individual included in the report is rarely subject to changes. Therefore, the occurrence of errors in them during automated filling of SZV-M is minimized. Incorrect data in this report occurs:

in case of a typo that occurred when entering new data about the employee for the reporting month;
delay in entering information about admission/dismissal into the accounting program;
program failure;
manually filling out the form.

As a result of the error:

the report may not include information about the employee;
data about the employee who was actually absent should be included;
information related to a specific employee is distorted.

The shortcoming that has arisen can be corrected using SZV-M complementary and/or SZV-M canceling. The specifics of using these forms are disclosed in the report form (approved by Resolution of the Pension Fund of Russia Board dated 01.02.2016 No. 83p) in the explanations to the paragraph reserved for indicating the type of form being created.

The supplementary form is intended to supplement already submitted reporting data with unincluded information. With its help, you can correct the error of not reflecting information about a specific employee or employees by submitting data for them for the same reporting period separately in a report with the code “additional”.

SZV-M canceling is used to eliminate incorrect information in two situations:

when data needs to be completely excluded from the report;
when the data needs to be replaced with the correct one.

In the second case, following the cancellation of the data, it is necessary to submit a supplementary report with the correct information on those persons in respect of whom the submission of data was canceled.

Will there be a penalty for failure to submit the cancellation form SZV-M? The repealing legislation does not provide for a penalty for failure to submit the SZV-M. However, punishment may follow for unreliability of information about insured persons submitted to the Pension Fund (Article 17 of Law No. 27-FZ) in the amount of 500 rubles. in relation to each person whose data is distorted. The use of the supplementary and canceling SZV-M forms allows you to avoid a fine on this basis.

How to avoid a fine and not pay money?

You can appeal a fine imposed if there are no grounds for its imposition.
For example, if the C3V-M was provided on time and filled out without errors, and the Pension Fund employees made a mistake with the details or made other errors. To appeal such a fine, you will need to send a statement of claim to the court, attaching the following materials:

Copies of the C3V-M report.
Requests from the Pension Fund for collection.
Receipts for transfer of state duty.
Bank payment order proving repayment of the fine.

To prevent reporting failures, the head of the institution needs to appoint a serious employee who has due responsibility for the assigned area of work, and in whose eyes there should always be a table with reporting deadlines.

How to reduce the fine?

These legislative norms do not imply mitigating circumstances for Pension Fund fines that would ensure their cancellation or reduction. However, if controversial issues arise, the employer has the right to appeal the decision of the Pension Fund of Russia by contacting the courts.

To do this, you will need to submit a statement of claim to the court and:

Demand recognition of part of the fine wrongfully imposed by the Pension Fund.
Reduce the amount of the penalty to the level shown in the resolution.
To substantiate the complaint, it is necessary to present, with reference to the 5th paragraph of the resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation No. 2-P dated January 19, 2016, arguments explaining the failure to report by the fact that this is the first case, and that the overdue time is short, etc.

If a fine is imposed on the entire number of personnel, when mistakes are made in relation to some employees, then this must be reflected in the claim, attaching a copy of C3B-M and in the request stating that the penalty is overestimated and needs to be reduced. To do this, similar court decisions in favor of the employer can be cited.