ANAF: 4% of employers do not pay the public pension contributions
Approximately 4% of the employers in the local market are not paying the state social security contributions (CAS), the voluntary compliance rate in collecting these contributions being 96%, according to the information sent exclusively for www.privatepensions.ro by the National Agency of Fiscal Administration (ANAF). The four percentages missing from the CAS collection may have an impact on the private pension market (pillar II), which is now getting ready to collect the first contributions on the 20th of May.
But there is some good news: the situation regarding the collection of social security contributions (of which two percent will go to the private pension funds, for almost 4.2 million employees) improved in the first quarter of this year, compared to last year. In 2007, the income in the state pension budget (pillar I) increased by 21.3% compared to the other collection rounds in 2006, but were 0.5% below the collection rate of the Finance and Fiscal authorities.
In the first quarter this year, the collection increased by 49.5% compared to the first quarter in 2007, while the contribution rate decreased by 1.5 percentage points (from the employer’s side). The increase is spectacular and is explained both by the natural increase in salaries taxed with CAS, and by the increase in the taxation base. Starting this year, CAS is no longer calculated and collected for the gross salary, but for the gross income, namely larger amounts, including premiums, bonuses, incentives and even part of other salary benefits.
As a result, the amounts collected for CAS in the first quarter of this year were 9% higher than the Ministry of Finance planned, while last year, the amounts collected were 0.5% below the planned amount. The voluntary compliance rate was 96% both last year and in the first quarter of this year, meaning that 4% of the employers did not pay for these pension contributions.
Considering all these data, it is highly likely that the pension funds collect from contributions amounts exceeding the initial estimations. The first contributions for the mandatory private pensions, pillar II, shall take place on Tuesday, the 20th of May, when the contributions for March 2008 shall be collected. According to the most recent estimations, based on data from the National House for Pensions and Social Security (CNPAS) and the current statistical data, the first monthly collection round shall bring in the pension funds’ accounts amounts ranging between EUR 25 and 30 million.
