From the Federal Tax Service to the Ministry of Justice: what fines threaten for failure to submit reports

Fines for failure to submit or failure to comply with reporting deadlines

Enterprises and entrepreneurs (IE) are required to submit reports to the Federal Tax Service, for violation of deadlines or failure to submit reports within a certain period of time, the Tax Code of the Russian Federation has established sanctions.

For late submission of a tax return or reporting of insurance premiums, the taxpayer faces a penalty for each month of absence, full or partial, in the amount of 5% of the tax or contribution that is not paid on time. This is stated in paragraph 1 of Art. 119 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation. The minimum penalty is 1000 rubles, the maximum is 30% of the unpaid fee or contribution.

A company that fails to submit other fiscal statements on time faces the following sanctions:

1. For each month of missing personal income tax reporting, the fine will be 1,000 rubles.

2. For enterprises that are late to report, the amount of the administrative fine for late submission of the transport tax return for 2021, established by Art. 15.5 of the Administrative Code, for a manager it is 300–500 rubles.

3. Expiration of the time allotted for submitting reports threatens with a fine for failure to submit a single declaration on time in 2021 in the amount of 1000 rubles, this amount is established in clause 1 of Art. 119 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation.

4. An enterprise that has committed a violation may be subject to an additional measure of liability for late submission of a VAT return - blocking of the current account. The tax authorities will make a decision if the delay exceeds 10 working days. The norm is established by clause 2 of Art. 76 Tax Code of the Russian Federation.

For failure to comply with the reporting period, it is possible to hold an official of the enterprise accountable - he faces a warning or financial sanctions. If the violation is committed by the head of a state or municipal body, a notary, under Art. 15.6 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, the fine for a manager for late submission of reports and failure to provide information necessary for the authorities to carry out control functions ranges from 500 to 1000 rubles.

Refusal to provide Federal Tax Service employees with documents requested during an inspection is considered a violation, as stated in paragraph 4 of Art. 93 Tax Code of the Russian Federation. For business entities, the fine for failure to provide documents and information at the request of the tax office in 2021 is determined by Art. 126, 126.1 and Art. 129.1 Tax Code of the Russian Federation:

• 200 rub. for 1 unsubmitted document;
• 500 rub. for an incorrect document (the tax agent is fined);
• 5000 rub. for unlawful failure to report information;
• 20,000 rub. for repeated similar violation.

Fines

Forgetting to submit a report is an accountant's nightmare. I keep a list in the form of a table, which indicates the organizations and individual entrepreneurs with whom I work, types of reports and deadlines. The accounting program also reminds you that the “X” date is approaching. You can additionally set up alerts on your smartphone (and still miss the signal). In this regard, I praise the Pension Fund - it always sends reminders about the transfer of SZV-M every month through the TKS operator. Sometimes it saves.

If you are unlucky and face punishment, you need to know what to prepare for. They are held accountable depending on the type of reporting.

Tax

The Tax Code for the main part of declarations (settlements) establishes a minimum sanction in the amount of 1000 rubles. Even when zero indicators are indicated, it must be paid.

If the report shows a tax (contribution) to be paid, but is not paid on time, then the fine will be 5% of the underpaid amount for each month of delay (including incomplete), but not more than 30% and not less than a thousand rubles. This rule applies to the following taxes: VAT, single tax on the simplified tax system, UTII, contributions to the Pension Fund, etc. In this case, Article 119 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation applies.

Note! If there is no activity, no income is received and the taxpayer is not going to declare expenses (including a loss or VAT deduction), has no movements in accounts and in the cash register, then instead of several declarations, he can submit one - a single one.

If interim (advance) reports are submitted during the year, as for income tax, then the fine for them will be much lower - 200 rubles per document. You must be guided by another article of the Tax Code - 126th. Similar sanctions apply to income certificates in Form 2-NDFL, information about the average number of employees.

For late submission of 6-NDFL, an organization or individual entrepreneur will fork out 1,000 rubles per month of delay (clause 1.2 of Article 126 of the Tax Code). The amount is fixed and does not depend on the amount of tax.

Accounting

Until 2021, balance sheets and other forms of accounting statements were also submitted to statistics, but, thanks to the government, now there is no need to send another copy to Goskomstat.

Important! Starting from January 1, 2021, financial statements are submitted exclusively in electronic form. A relaxation has been made for small and medium-sized transport enterprises; the norm applies to them from January 1, 2021.

The report includes several forms:

• Balance sheet.
• Income statement.
• Statement of changes in equity.
• Cash flow statement.
• Report on the intended use of funds.
• Explanatory note (if necessary).

There is a truncated version - for those who have the right to keep simplified accounting and provide the same reporting, moreover, it is not necessary to include information about target funds or changes in capital in the absence of corresponding transactions.

Considering that the balance sheet and other annexes do not relate to declarations, they are subject to paragraph 1 of Art. 126 of the Tax Code and the fine will be only 200 rubles per document.

Statistical

It is useless to write about forms for Goskomstat. There is no universal list; it is necessary to focus on the specifics of the activity and the organizational and legal form. You can check whether a particular organization or entrepreneur needs to submit something on the official website. Please note that updates occur regularly; it is worth making a request at least a couple of times a month and writing out a list of regular reports.

Some accounting programs are able to generate them independently and remind you of the taxpayer’s obligation, but often the forms have to be filled out manually. A little advice - look at the instructions, it indicates in which cases you do not need to fill out the report or you can send it blank. Sometimes, in the absence of relevant indicators, it will be necessary to send an information letter.

By the way! The composition of statistical reporting forms is influenced by OKVED codes in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. It is recommended to remove them when they are not in use, added “just in case,” the activity is terminated voluntarily or as a result of a decision of a government agency (for example, when a license is revoked) and the organization does not intend to resume it in the foreseeable future.

Fines according to statistics are specified in Article 13.19 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and are divided into two types:

• For the manager (or other responsible person, including the chief accountant) - 10,000 - 20,000 rubles, in case of repeated violation - from 30 to 50 thousand.
• For legal entities - 20,000 - 70,000 rubles, repeat - from 100 to 150 thousand.

More than substantial sums for a small organization, and they relate not only to late submission, but also to the provision of false information.

Pension Fund

To the Pension Fund of Russia, the number of documents submitted has been significantly reduced; now we submit three reports: SZV-M (monthly), SZV-STAZH (annual) and SZV-TD (in 2021, provided differently depending on the availability of dismissals/acceptances).

The simplest but most insidious is SZV-M. The only information is your full name, INN and SNILS, but in one of my first articles we already talked about errors in basic reports. Don’t forget: the data for SZV-M and SZV-STAZH must match the periods.

Article 17 of Law No. 27-FZ of 04/01/1996 promises to “reward” the company with a fine of 500 rubles for each individual for lateness, incomplete or incorrect information. If you forgot to include an employee in the SZV-M list, you must submit a supplementary form and pay sanctions for only one person. The same rules apply to SZV-STAZH and SZV-TD.

Important! We pay fines on personalized reports to the Pension Fund of Russia branch, and not to the tax office. The Pension Fund does not block the account on its own, but has the right to send documents to the bailiff service, which will remove the debt from the account.

From January 1, 2021, amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses will come into force. Thus, Article 15.33.2 will provide for fines in the amount of 300 to 500 rubles for late submission or errors in information about work activity, and not just in the usual SZV forms.

FSS

The Social Insurance Fund accepts 4-FSS, which reflects contributions for accidents at work. Article 26.30 of Federal Law No. 125-FZ of July 24, 1998 establishes for failure to submit the same sanctions as for tax reporting - 5% of contributions accrued for payment (for the last quarter in the document) for each month of delay, but not more than 30 % and at least 1000 rubles.

Note! Some reports are submitted only electronically, for example, VAT returns. Sending a paper copy by mail is not considered fulfillment of the taxpayer's obligation.

If the 4-FSS calculation is submitted electronically according to the law, but is instead transferred on paper, you will have to go broke for 200 rubles, as stated in the second paragraph of Art. 26.30.

Ecology

To pass or not to pass, that is the question. Small organizations in which there was never a smell of production, as well as most individual entrepreneurs, decided to neglect the environment. In 2021, a number of amendments were made to the Administrative Code, increasing liability for violations of environmental protection, including for the lack of reports.

Article 8.5.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses establishes sanctions separately for individual entrepreneurs and organizations:

• The reporting is presented, but it is unreliable or lacks some data. The individual entrepreneur will receive a fine of at least 100 thousand, but in general it is calculated in double the amount of collection for each group of goods (packaging of goods) for which the recycling standard is calculated. Organizations will be punished according to the same calculation, only the minimum for them is already 250,000.
• The report has not been submitted. An individual entrepreneur will pay from 50,000 to 70,000 rubles, and an organization will pay from 70 to 150 thousand. There is an administrative monetary penalty for officials - 3-6 thousand rubles.

If you work with government contracts, performing repairs, construction work, dismantling, then in the text of the contract look for a clause (there will probably be one) about storing and removing waste. Those. The contractor will have to answer for the disposal of old lamps, wiring, unusable equipment and furniture; he must enter into contracts and remove the waste, and not dump it in the nearest trash container. Here's environmental collection and recycling.

Military registration and enlistment office

In 2021, the Code of Administrative Offenses is undergoing another change - in the field of military registration. If you have never encountered reporting to the military registration and enlistment office, know that everyone must submit it. Of course, we are not talking about declarations or calculations, but special information. For example, on the hiring or dismissal of employees subject to military registration. When there are employees under 17 years of age on staff, their seventeenth birthday must be reported in advance - a year before their birthday.

Fines are provided for in the Administrative Code: Article 21.4 promises to punish administratively from one to five thousand rubles for failure to notify of admission or dismissal, the same amount will have to be paid if you do not respond to the request of the military registration and enlistment office. In Article 21.1, slightly smaller sanctions from 1000 to 3000 are established for an employer who does not report on time about 17-year-old employees.

Employment Center

In 2021, the list was replenished with reports to the employment service. More precisely, it was previously required to transfer information there, but only in certain cases: during the liquidation of an organization, staff reduction, when layoffs affected an enterprise with more than 500 employees, etc.

Due to the difficult epidemic situation (many enterprises are closing amid the coronavirus crisis), a large amount of labor is being released, and the state has promised to support the unemployed. For these purposes, the forms were supplemented with some data: wage arrears, the number of remote workers, working part-time, fired or expected to be fired since the beginning of quarantine.

You can submit information through the Work in Russia website. Registration using the State Services account of the individual manager to whom the organization is linked.

Important! They mainly require the transfer of information from those who have experienced changes: dismissal, layoff, transition to part-time work or remote work. If there are no changes to your work, you do not need to submit anything.

So far no sanctions have been applied, but the service is showing enviable persistence. In addition, the CZ needs to transmit information about vacancies, which is expressly stated in paragraph 3 of Art. 25 of Law No. 1032-1 of April 19, 1991. The Code of Administrative Offenses has Article 19.7, which establishes fines for failure to provide information for officials - from 300 to 500 rubles, for organizations - from 3 to 5 thousand rubles. Theoretically, it applies to information in the CZN.

Examples of fine calculations

Consul LLC submitted a VAT return for the 3rd quarter of 2021, for which the filing deadline is October 25, 2020, and 3 days later - October 28, 2021.

The amount of payment under the ND amounted to 900,000 rubles, of which 300,000 rubles were transferred in arrears.

Since the delay was 3 days, the penalty for violation is calculated as follows: 300,000 × 5% × 1 (month of missed deadline) = 15,000 rubles.

The Federal Tax Service would limit itself to a fine for late submission of a VAT return in the amount of 1,000 rubles if the company paid the tax on time.

What are the features of the declaration?

The updated VAT report from 2021 is not limited to the fact that it indicates the amount of calculated tax and the procedure for calculating the tax base. As an addition, the declaration form began to include data from the purchase book and sales book for the reporting period (sections 8 and 9).

Each line of sections indicates:

• INN/KPP of the counterparty;
• initial data on the registered invoice (number, date);
• time of registration of received goods/services;
• amount of income/sales;
• VAT amount.

When transmitting the declaration electronically to the tax authority, the information presented in the report is automatically verified. Firstly, the relevance of the partner’s TIN in the registers of legal entities is monitored. Secondly, entries in the purchase/sale books of both counterparties are compared.

This system for submitting a VAT return allows the tax inspector to conduct a desk audit already at the stage of receiving the report.

Remember: you must submit a VAT return to the territorial tax authority where the legal entity is registered. For individual entrepreneurs, the place of submission of VAT reports coincides with the place of permanent registration.

Read how to fill out a VAT return

What is the statute of limitations for prosecution?

Tax authorities have the right to hold an enterprise accountable only within 3 years after violating the reporting rules.

The date from which to count the statute of limitations for fines for late submission of reports is determined in two ways:

• from the time following the end of the period in which the violation was committed;
• from the date of the event.

In Art. 46 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation states within what period a fine will be issued after submitting a declaration if the company has not made the payment voluntarily.

Tax officers can:

• no later than 2 months after the end of the period for fulfilling the requirement for payment, make a decision on collection and issue a collection;
• If you miss the moment for an indisputable recovery, go to court with a claim, the filing of which is given 6 months.

In 2021, the deadline for sending tax payment requests has been increased by 6 months (Government Decree No. 409 of 04/02/2020).

Types of tax obligations

There are a number of tax obligations for both individuals and legal entities.

Thus, individuals are required to pay taxes:

• on income (personal income tax) in the amount of 13% on all types of income, including wages, income from rental property, income from winnings, etc.;
• property tax, including real estate tax and transport tax.

Legal entities and individual entrepreneurs bear the following tax obligations, depending on the type and system of taxation:

• VAT;
• for the profit of legal entities (STS, UTII, OSN, PSN). For individual entrepreneurs – personal income tax;
• excise taxes;
• social.

Any deviations from the correct fulfillment of tax obligations are punishable (depending on the amount of damage to the state) either through administrative or criminal liability.

Is it possible to reduce the size of sanctions and how to do it?

A reduction in the amount of the fine for failure to submit reports on personal income tax and other taxes is allowed under mitigating circumstances, as stated in paragraph 1 of Art. 112, paragraph 3 of Art. 114 Tax Code of the Russian Federation. You will need to prepare an appeal to the Federal Tax Service indicating the reasons for the violation.

Arguments used as mitigation:

• payment of tax on time;
• the violation was committed once;
• no debt in payment of other taxes.

Often tax authorities reduce the amount of punishment for failure to submit reports if the violation occurred for the first time and the company has paid the debt according to the audit report.

An enterprise has the right to file a lawsuit if the tax authorities refuse to reduce the amount of sanctions. To consider the case, you will need to attach documents confirming the plaintiff’s claim.

Tax inspector fines

The tax inspectorate may impose a fine in addition to penalties. But you won't be fined just because you missed a deadline. To impose a fine, you must incorrectly calculate the tax and underestimate it. This is explained by the Supreme Arbitration Court in paragraph 19 of the resolution.

• If you pay tax later than necessary, but in the correct amount, only penalties will be charged.
• If you underestimate the tax in your return and pay this amount, the tax office will charge additional taxes, penalties and fines.

The amount of the fine is fixed; it is charged not for days of delay, like penalties, but for the violation as a whole. The fine for non-payment of tax is 20% of the debt amount if the tax was not underestimated on purpose, 40% if it was intentionally underestimated.

Responsibility under the Tax Code

First of all, it should be understood that the responsibility established in the Tax Code is the same administrative responsibility, although not included in the Administrative Code.

The main types of offenses in the field of tax obligations of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation include:

• “shadow activity” or failure to register with the Federal Tax Service as a tax payer (Article 116 of the Tax Code);
• incorrect calculations of tax obligations (Article 120 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation);
• evasion of submitting a declaration, explanations and documents to the Federal Tax Service (Articles 119, 123, 122 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation).

That is, as we see, the Tax Code regulates liability only in terms of organizational issues related to the Federal Tax Service.

Zero tax reporting for OSNO

There are a number of taxes that are mandatory for the general regime - VAT, income tax. For these taxes, you will have to file zero returns even if there is no turnover. Zero profit and VAT declarations must include a title page and mandatory sections with dashes (which sections are required for a particular declaration, you can always find out from the instructions for filling it out).

Other taxes (on property, land, water, etc.) are paid only if there is an object. If you don’t have land, then you don’t pay tax and don’t submit any form of declaration. That is, if there are no corresponding taxable objects, a zero declaration is not submitted. The property tax has a zero declaration. It must be submitted if you have taxable objects, but the total tax amount for all of them is zero.

There is a single simplified return that replaces multiple tax returns. It has the right to be drawn up and submitted by those payers who during the reporting period had no movement in the cash register and current account, and also had no objects of taxation (Clause 2 of Article 80 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation). The deadline for this declaration is until the 20th day of the month following the reporting quarter.

If there has been no activity all year, you need to submit a balance sheet. At a minimum, the amount of the authorized capital in the liability will be indicated and one of the asset lines will be filled in.

The deadlines for submitting zero reports to the tax office are similar to the deadlines for submitting reports for each type of tax.