At the beginning of the new year of 2019, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Finance made intensive statements, claiming that it is actively studying the implementation plan for enterprises to reduce the social security premium rate of and . Authoritative sources said that the difference between the next round of fee reduction and the past is that it is no longer a "phase" fee reduction but a "institutional" fee reduction. The nominal fee rate of pension insurance will become the highlight of social security fee reduction.
The deadline for the current phased reduction of social security premiums is April 30, 2019. It can be expected that a new round of policies to reduce social security premiums will be launched before May 1 this year.
moves from phased fee reduction to institutional fee reduction
Since the supply-side reform was proposed in 2015, as one of the important measures for enterprises to "reduce costs", reducing the social security premium rate has been put on the agenda.
The previous round of social insurance premium reduction began with the reduction of unemployment insurance premium rate in early 2015. Immediately afterwards, in June 2015, the State Council decided to lower the rates of work-related injury insurance and maternity insurance; in April 2016, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security issued the "Notice on Phased Reduction of Social Insurance Premium Rate", deciding that the unemployment insurance premium rate will continue to be lowered and decided to lower the pension insurance premium rate. This phased policy has been postponed to April 30, 2019.
Current policy requirements for phased reduction of pension insurance premium rates. If the unit payment ratio of basic pension insurance for enterprises exceeds 19% of the company, and the cumulative fund balance of the fund can be paid for months (as of the end of 2017, the same below) is higher than 9 months, the unit payment ratio of 19% can be implemented in phase until April 30, 2019.
From 2015 to 2018, my country's social security premium rate dropped by an average of 3 percentage points, with a 10% reduction, but the company's feeling is not obvious.
Zheng Bingwen, director of the World Social Security Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with the media that after several social security fee reductions since 2015, it is initially estimated that the cumulative cost reduction for enterprises is about 400 billion yuan, with an average of 100 billion yuan per year. However, there are two reasons why the effect of fee reduction is not significant. First, the 400 billion yuan is distributed to various provinces, and the amplitude is not obvious; second, although the rates of unemployment and work-related injuries have been reduced, the pension insurance premium rate, which accounts for the "big portion", remains high.
In 2018, under the superposition of downward economic pressure and external uncertainties, the call for lowering social security premiums to effectively reduce corporate costs has revived, and significantly reducing pension insurance premiums has become an urgent requirement for enterprises.
"China Enterprise Social Security White Paper 2018" shows that the interviewed companies hope to continue to reduce the fee rate: 27.34% of the companies chose "it will be more reasonable and compliant to reduce the fee by 8 to 10 percentage points compared to the current level", accounting for the largest proportion.
In September last year, the State Council Executive Meeting proposed that the reduction of social security premium rate was implemented simultaneously with the reform of the collection system, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Finance and other departments immediately launched a new round of social security fee reduction plan design. Authoritative sources said that a new round of social security fee reduction plan is being formulated in full swing. Unlike the "phase" rate reduction in the past few times, this fee reduction is a "institutional" fee reduction, and the nominal rate of pension insurance will be reduced.
Judging from the recent intensive statements by officials of ministries and commissions, a consensus has been reached on the plan to reduce social security premiums.
htmlOn January 11, Minister of Finance Liu Kun said that he was actively studying and formulating a comprehensive plan to reduce social insurance premiums with high market attention; on the 13th, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Zhang Jinan said that he would speed up the implementation plan for enterprises to reduce social insurance premiums with relevant departments; on the 15th, Assistant Minister of Finance Xu Hongcai said that he would actively study and formulate a comprehensive plan for social insurance premiums to further reduce the burden of social insurance payments for enterprises; on the 16th, Deputy Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Qiu Xiaoping said that the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will accelerate the study of implementation plans for reducing social insurance premiums and increase the intensity and range of unemployment insurance premiums.
Environmentally need to reduce costs
In 2018, the trigger for the social security fee reduction being pushed to the forefront was the reform of the social security collection system.
On July 20, 2018, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Reform Plan for the State Taxation and Local Tax Collection and Administration System", which clearly stipulates that basic pension insurance premiums, basic medical insurance premiums, unemployment insurance premiums, work-related injury insurance premiums, maternity insurance premiums and other social insurance premiums will be handed over to the tax department for unified collection and will be officially implemented from January 1, 2019.After the reform plan of
was announced, it caused a huge wave of waves, and companies were worried that labor costs would increase, and even companies lay off employees or reduced employment scale.
, Director of the National Economic Research Center of Peking University , Su Jian , pointed out in the article "The Macroeconomic Effects of Social Security Collection and Payment Reform", that the calculation of 3,537 A-share listed companies shows that if listed companies pay social security fees in full, the average labor cost will increase by 12%.
Due to the impact of my country's economy on employment-driven effect and the sharp decline of the working-age population, my country's labor market shows that demand is greater than supply, and there is little possibility of listed companies laying off employees significantly due to the increase in social security payments. But it is worth noting that the impact of the social security collection and payment reform on non-fixed employees in these enterprises, such as the large number of labor dispatch employees used in these enterprises.
Director of the Employment Research Institute of Renmin University of China Zeng Xiangquan believes that what enterprises are most concerned about is costs, and the first thing to do to stabilize employment is to reduce costs. At this stage, my country's social security problem is mainly reflected in the high nominal fee rate. The government should introduce clear measures as soon as possible to reduce the social security fee rate to stabilize corporate expectations.
Under the expectation of substantial tax and fee reductions, it has become the expectation of enterprises to significantly reduce social security rates, especially pension insurance rates. However, judging from the income and expenditure status of the pension insurance fund, there is not much room for simply significantly reducing the pension insurance premium rate. Once some provinces with less surplus have reduced fees, the funds will soon become imbalanced.
In this case, consolidating the fee base has become an important prerequisite for reducing the fee rate. According to Zheng Bingwen's calculations, the current actual payment rate for employees' basic pension insurance in the country is only 15.8%, far less than 28% of the "nominal" total rate.
The gap between the nominal rate and the actual rate is a major problem in my country's pension insurance system. In recent years, while the government has lowered the social security premium rate, it has also strengthened the collection and payment of social security premiums, which is also the reason why many companies feel that the social security burden has increased instead of falling.
Research report released by CICC shows that since the income from the collection of basic pension insurance for urban employees in 2014 is not enough to cover expenditure, the growth rate of social average wages has slowed down year by year, but the growth rate of per capita payments has accelerated. The actual payment ratio increased from 19.6% to 21.6% in 2017, a significant increase of 2 percentage points within one year.
The latest "China Pension Development Report 2018" released by the World Social Security Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences stated that in recent years, the income of urban employees' basic pension insurance fund has continued to increase at a relatively rapid pace, mainly due to the rapid increase in collection income and fiscal subsidies. In addition to the growth of insured employees and wages, the growth of collection income is also due to the continuous increase in collection efforts.
significantly reduces the fee rate and implements the simultaneous implementation of the simultaneous reform of the collection system
Against the backdrop of increasing collection efforts, the reform of social security tax collection has aroused widespread concerns among enterprises. The 2018 "China Enterprise Social Security White Paper" stated that companies with non-compliant social security contribution base account for 73%. A large number of non-compliant companies do not pay full social security.
has a lower limit for the social security base in the social security collection and payment policy before January 1, 2019, which induces enterprises and employees to pay social insurance premiums as the social security base, resulting in a situation where social security is underpaid.
"The Macroeconomic Effects of Social Security Collection and Payment Reform" states that among the more than 3,000 listed companies, only 134 companies paying social security formally, accounting for 4%, and 96% of other companies did not pay in full. Su Jian told the First Financial reporter that this result was calculated by comparing the total salary of listed companies and social security expenditures.
article stated that based on the situation in 2017, if the full amount is paid, all listed companies should pay about 720 billion yuan, but in fact they only paid 444.8 billion yuan. If the payment is sufficient, the average labor cost of listed companies will increase by 12%.
The original intention of the reform of social security tax collection is to reduce the arbitrary nature of local independent management and help improve the actual tax payment rate. However, this reform does not fully consider the degree of adaptation of enterprises and the expected effect of tightening.
"China Pension Development Report 2018" believes that for the basic pension insurance for urban employees, increasing the collection efforts (especially the actual payment base) can promote the growth of collection income in a certain period of time, but the call for lowering the fee rate is already very high, and the growth of collection income in the future will be restricted.
In order to stabilize enterprise expectations and ensure that the burden on enterprises is not increased due to the reform of the collection system, Beijing, Jilin, Shanxi and other provinces have made it clear at the beginning of the year that the social security fees for enterprise employees will not be transferred to tax collection for the time being.
The State Council has proposed to implement the reduction of social security premiums simultaneously with the reform of the collection system. When the fee reduction plan has not been issued, handing over social security premiums to tax collection is also inconsistent with the spirit of the State Council. The reform of the collection and payment system is not contradictory to the reduction of fee rates. On the contrary, it helps to create conditions for reducing the social security rate.
For pension insurance funds that are increasingly tight, the extent of the fee reduction rate is closely related to the degree of realizing the tax base. If the tax base is not realizing the tax base, simply introducing measures to significantly reduce the fee rate will also increase the unsustainability of the fund.
Social security fee reduction rate is a systematic project that not only requires internal adjustments to the pension insurance system, but also requires financial subsidies and reforms to allocate state-owned assets. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security also stated that it will continue to promote the transfer of part of state-owned capital to enrich the social security fund and improve the fund's risk resistance.
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