OREANDA-NEWS. December 4, 2008. Next spring the Russian government could review whether to roll back the period for replacing the unified social tax with insurance payments, Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Shatalov said. He pointed out that in spring 2009 the Cabinet could address the issue of postponing the replacement of the unified social tax with insurance payments, and also the amounts of these payments.

The deputy finance minister noted the pension system reform issue was discussed for a long time, but eventually a decision in principle was adopted to cancel the unified social tax starting 2010 and introduce contributions with regard to pension insurance, mandatory medical insurance and social security. In addition, the aggregate rate of insurance payments will be higher than that of the unified social tax, as it will be hiked from 26% to 34%. The 3-level regressive scale of the unified social tax will be replaced with a 2-tier system, whereby annual wages exceeding RUB 406,000 will not be subject to insurance payments.