Tax calculation. Photo: Fizkes | Dreamstime.com
The government has expanded the categories of employees who benefit from the collection of salary rights from the salary receivables guarantee fund.
Employers who employ salaried employees on the basis of individual employment contracts must pay the labor insurance contribution – at a percentage of 2.25% – on the monthly gross salary income of the employees. The tax was introduced from January 1, 2018, by the then Minister of Finance Ionuț Mișa, being initially presented as a “solidarity tax”
This contribution finances the guarantee fund for the payment of salary claims, as regulated by Law no. 200/2006. Thus, employees who did not receive their salary rights due to the opening of the employer's insolvency procedure have the right to collect the outstanding salaries financed from this fund, explains fiscal consultant Adrian Bența.
Through the GEO adopted on Friday and published in the Official Gazette no. 137, the Government decided to extend the right to collect outstanding salaries also to employees who register outstanding salaries when they are in the preventive arrangement procedure. This is a first amendment brought by this ordinance.
Another change, says Bența, consists in the fact that the wages are also guaranteed for the payment of the employees of some employers considered “economic operators of strategic interest”. The economic operator of strategic interest is that economic operator established by government decision, regardless of the form of ownership, whose activity is essential for national defense, economic, energy, food or social security or for the operation of critical infrastructures.
A third change consists in updating the amounts borne from the guarantee fund according to the employers' situation, as follows:
- For employees in insolvency proceedings, the maximum amount is 5 average gross salaries;
- For employees whose employers are in a preventive agreement, the amount is a maximum of 5 average gross salaries;
- For employees whose employers are considered economic operators of strategic interest, the settled amount is between 5 and 12 average gross salaries.
The settlement of these amounts is carried out through a procedure carried out with the national employment agency.
The ordinance establishes that within 30 days the application rules will also be updated.
