Dangerous work: administrative and criminal liability of accountants

Due to the complexity and importance of the work, the chief accountant is constantly at risk. He can be punished by the manager, the tax office, or the company's counterparties. They have a whole set of tools for this. There are types of liability to which the chief accountant can be brought, such as disciplinary, material, tax, administrative, civil and even criminal. Therefore, we decided to figure out exactly what threats exist for an accountant and show with a dozen examples when they can be avoided and when not. Conclusions are drawn from all examples.

Separation of responsibilities between the general director and the chief accountant

The issue of delimitation of responsibility falls within the scope of the Law “On Accounting”.
In paragraph 2 of Art. 13 of this law states that accounting is organized by an economic entity, that is, an organization. This means that the responsibility initially lies with her.

The law does not directly address the responsibility of the chief accountant. At the same time, in paragraph 3 of Art. 13 it is determined that the head of an economic entity is obliged to entrust accounting to the chief accountant or other official.

Therefore, if the company has an accountant, then he is responsible for the correctness of accounting.

Other related responsibilities, such as: reliably preparing and timely submitting tax returns to the Federal Tax Service, as well as other documents, are assigned to the accountant if they are specified in the employment contract with him or in his job description. Accordingly, responsibility for violations related to this documentation may also be assigned to him.

Therefore, in order to avoid involving an accountant in legal disputes about whether he is guilty of a specific violation or not, it is advisable for him to ensure that his duties and responsibilities are spelled out in great detail in the employment contract and job description.

However, if disagreements arise between the chief accountant and the general director, and the first performs this or that action, having secured a written order from the manager, then full responsibility for the decision made will fall on the general director (clause 8 of article 7 of the Accounting Law).

The chief accountant's responsibility for the correctness of accounting can be divided into disciplinary, material, administrative, criminal and civil (including subsidiary). Next we will talk about each separately.

Learn how to delimit responsibility so that the chief accountant has less chance of getting caught in a criminal case in the Clerk’s online course on protection during tax audits. Sign up!

How to avoid penalties for accounting violations

The chief accountant and director can avoid fines from inspectors. To do this, you need to document that:

• a corrective declaration, calculation or other reporting has been provided;
• the amount of tax, fee and contribution not paid due to distortion of accounting data is fully repaid to the budget;
• penalties for late payments due to violations and distortions in accounting have been fully paid;
• the accounting error was corrected in the prescribed manner before the accounting was approved, including the preparation of revised financial statements.

Explanations regarding how administrative responsibility for violation of accounting rules is determined were given by the Ministry of Finance in a separate Information Notice dated 04/07/2016 No. IS-accounting-3.

Disciplinary responsibility

This type of liability is the easiest to apply, since it is the company itself that resorts to it, and not the regulatory authorities, it is not difficult to collect evidence of misconduct, and the procedure for imposing a penalty is relatively simple.
In accordance with labor legislation, disciplinary sanctions are divided into reprimand, reprimand and dismissal (Article 192 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). All of them apply to the chief accountant as to an ordinary employee.

In addition, the employer has an additional reason for parting with the chief accountant - for lack of professionalism that resulted in damage. The Code literally states this as follows: “An employment contract may be terminated at the initiative of the employer in connection with the adoption of an unreasonable decision by the chief accountant, which entails a violation of the safety of property, its unlawful use or other damage to the organization’s property” (Clause 9, Part 1, Art. 81 Labor Code of the Russian Federation).

True, it is practically quite difficult to fire an accountant on this basis. The fact is that sometimes an employer tries to part with an accountant, accusing him of failure to fulfill duties that are not specified in his job description.

Example #1

The chief accountant was reprimanded for a gross violation of labor discipline, which was expressed “in the unauthorized leaving of work, and, as a result, becoming a negative example to subordinate personnel, contributing to a general decline in labor discipline in the branch.”

The chief accountant went to court and cited the following as justification:

• left the workplace in connection with the performance of work duties - went to submit reports to the statistics agency;
• she has an irregular working day;
• She informed another accountant and deputy general director about her trip to the statistics agency.

However, the court rejected these arguments because:

• The Rosstat body, at the request of the court, reported that the company’s reports were submitted several days before the ill-fated day, and submitted both electronically and by hand;
• According to the employment contract and internal labor regulations, the chief accountant’s work hours are standardized: a five-day work week from 08:30 to 16:45 (on Friday until 16:30). She was absent from work from 16:00 to 16:45, which is a violation of the work schedule;
• According to the job description of the chief accountant, he reports directly to the director, and his departure from the workplace was not agreed upon.

Thus, the disciplinary sanction was applied justifiably (Appeal ruling of the Murmansk Regional Court dated August 28, 2018 No. 33-2543/2018).
Conclusion: the chief accountant is one of the employees, and therefore is obliged to comply with all the terms of the employment contract and internal labor regulations. Deviation from them in the absence of valid reasons may be subject to disciplinary punishment. There are no exceptions for the chief accountant. If you really need to travel to regulatory agencies, then you should get management to either make changes to the work schedule, allowing for occasional traveling, or formalize your absence from the workplace in the form of a business trip.

Example No. 2

The chief accountant, in the event of any complaint against her from management, be it discipline or official duties, deletes all documents and programs from the work computer, copying them to her external storage device, and goes on sick leave.

Can she be punished for such actions?

What should an employer do to prevent such situations?

Rostrud provided answers to these questions on its online resource: the employee’s responsibility for these actions is not provided for by labor legislation. Therefore, the company cannot punish the chief accountant on the basis of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.

To prevent such situations, the company has the right to establish in the relevant local regulations a ban on employees copying and deleting files and programs from a work computer, as well as prohibit the use of external storage media.

Conclusion: if the company prescribes such prohibitions, then in case of violation of them, any employee, including the chief accountant, can be subject to disciplinary punishment, including the use of extreme measures - dismissal.

Example No. 3

The accountant was dismissed due to the adoption of an unfounded decision under clause 9 of part 1 of art. 81 Labor Code of the Russian Federation.

The grounds for dismissal were:

• incorrect indication of the KBK when transferring the trade fee;
• violation of personnel records, recorded by a resolution of Rostrud imposing a fine.

The chief accountant sued the employer, putting forward the following demands:

• recognize the dismissal order as illegal;
• oblige to change the wording of the reason for dismissal in the work book to “Termination of the employment contract at the initiative of the employee (at his own request)”, also changing the date of dismissal to the date of the court’s decision;
• to recover from the defendant in favor of the plaintiff the average salary for the period of forced absence from the date of dismissal to the day of the decision in the amount of 987 thousand rubles;
• to recover compensation for moral damage in the amount of 100 thousand rubles.

The court granted the claim for two reasons.

1. The accountant provided the court with a letter sent to the Federal Tax Service signed by the general director, which stated that the BCC was indicated correctly and the company did not agree with the tax authorities’ request to impose a fine. Thus, the manager admitted that the accountant was not to blame for causing damage to the organization.
2. In accordance with the job description of the chief accountant, his functions did not include maintaining personnel records.

Thus, during the trial, the employer was unable to confirm the accountant’s guilt in making an unreasonable decision.
There were other reasons for canceling the dismissal related to the employer’s violation of the procedure for bringing disciplinary action:

• the accountant was fired outside the required monthly period;
• there were no valid reasons for this absence;
• no documents were submitted requesting written explanations from the employee.

All the woman’s demands, except for compensation for moral damage (the court decided to compensate 20 thousand rubles instead of the requested 100 thousand rubles), were satisfied.
Conclusion: it will not be possible to fire an accountant for imposing fines on a company if there is no violation at all. Especially when the head of the company confirms this, even if he doesn’t even suspect it. If the accountant is not engaged in certain work in principle, for example, he is not entrusted with maintaining personnel records, then there are no legal grounds to punish for violations in the course of this work (Appeal ruling of the St. Petersburg City Court dated January 16, 2018 No. 33-1690/2018 ).

Main

1. Responsibility for organizing the company's accounting lies with its director.
2. The manager either assumes responsibility for maintaining accounting records or uses the services of an accountant (chief accountant at the head of the accounting department).
3. In addition, third parties may be involved in accounting work.
4. The qualifications of accounting workers are determined by the current professional standards and legislative acts of the Russian Federation.
5. Responsibility for incorrect accounting: from a fine and reprimand to imprisonment for gross violations in its management.

Material liability

According to part 2 of Art.
243 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, an accountant may be assigned full financial responsibility. The Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated November 16, 2006 No. 52 states that this is possible provided that it is allowed by the employment contract with the chief accountant. Otherwise, he can only be held liable to the extent of his average monthly earnings.

Example #1

The Pension Fund fined the institution 57 thousand rubles for late submission of reports.

The organization decided to recover this money from the chief accountant, deciding that she was to blame for what happened.

The first instance upheld the claim, deciding that the fine was a consequence of the accountant’s improper performance of his duties as provided for in the employment contract.

But the appeal overturned the colleagues’ decision.

The judges indicated that the fine for failure to submit calculations of insurance premiums on time cannot be attributed to direct actual damage under Part 2 of Art. 238 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and does not correspond to the concept of losses in paragraph 2 of Art. 15 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which the employee is obliged to compensate.

Therefore, there are no grounds to satisfy the claim (Appeal ruling of the Moscow City Court dated December 14, 2017 No. 33-51403/17).

Conclusion: a fine for late submission of reports is not a loss and is not subject to compensation at the expense of the chief accountant.

Here is another case where it was possible to recover damages from the chief accountant “thanks” to his gullibility.

Example No. 2

The company entered into a car rental agreement with one of its employees for 11.5 thousand rubles per month.

Based on the results of the audit, the employer discovered that the accountant had written off 131 thousand rubles from the company’s account in favor of the owner of the car. However, the owner of the car claimed that he did not receive the money.

From this it was concluded that the accountant had misappropriated the written-off funds, and the company sued the chief accountant demanding the return of 131 thousand rubles as material damage caused to the company.

The court partially satisfied the claim: it collected 25.5 thousand rubles from the accountant. The appeal upheld the decision.

The accountant's guilt became obvious to the judges. But the amount of damages recovered was significantly reduced by the court due to the fact that an agreement on full financial liability was not concluded with the accountant.

In this regard, the accountant must compensate for the damage not in full, but only in the amount of his average monthly earnings (Appeal ruling of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court dated November 14, 2017 No. 33-20051/2017).

Conclusion: if possible, an accountant should refuse to sign an agreement on full financial liability.

What is the difference between full and limited liability of an accountant?

The financial responsibility of the chief accountant to the employer is of two types:

• Full financial liability obliging to compensate the damage caused by the chief accountant to employees or the organization in full.
• Limited financial liability, the occurrence of which is regulated by the provisions of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.

The chief accountant bears limited financial liability if he violated the job description unintentionally, and this caused harm to the company. The amount of recovery from him in this case is equal to the amount of his earnings for the month. This is established at the legislative level.

If the accountant bears full financial responsibility, then he is obliged to compensate the company for the damage caused in 100% of the amount. Full financial liability may be imposed on an employee if he signed the relevant agreement when registering an employment relationship or in accordance with Art. 243 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. But the current rules also prescribe the possibility of liability of this level in the following cases:

• If the damage was caused intentionally or while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
• If the damage was caused in order to obtain financial gain, or there was a conspiracy with third parties (subject to this fact being established in court).
• If a commercial or state secret was disclosed, subject to signing a non-disclosure agreement with the employee during employment.

The amount of damage caused in such cases is determined by the court.

Administrative responsibility

An accountant can be punished for failure to fulfill the duties specified in the employment contract or in the job description for the following violations:
1. Gross violation of accounting and reporting requirements (Article 15.11 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation): fine - from 5 to 10 thousand rubles, for repeated violation – from 10 to 20 thousand rubles or disqualification for a period of 1 to 2 years.

Gross violations include:

• understating the amount of taxes and fees by at least 10 percent;
• understatement of any financial reporting indicator by at least 10 percent;
• registration of a fact of economic life that did not take place;
• maintaining accounts outside the established accounting registers;
• lack of “primary”.

On May 16, 2022, the State Duma adopted a law amended to Art.
15.11 and 15.15.6 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (draft bill No. 455237-7). The changes are both positive for chief accountants and negative for those working in the public sector (Article 15.15.6).

The good news is that chief accountants will be exempt from liability for the mistakes of others, that is, they will not be fined if:

• primary documents for registration in registers were not transferred to them or were transferred late;
• primary documents that do not correspond to accomplished facts were drawn up by other employees, and not by the chief accountant.

The bad news is that the fine imposed on accountants for gross violations in the budgetary and financial statements of public sector organizations is increasing to 50 thousand rubles.
At the same time, this innovation is only bad relatively, since the size of the fine will depend on the degree of distortion of indicators in reporting, namely:

• insignificant - will entail a warning or a fine of 1 to 5 thousand rubles (distortion in the amount of 1 to 10 percent, and not exceeding 100 thousand rubles);
• significant - a fine of 5 to 15 thousand rubles;
• gross - a fine of 15 to 30 thousand rubles.

Significance criteria are provided.
For example, minor is a distortion of indicators by 1-10 percent and in the amount of up to 100 thousand rubles, or by no more than 1 percent and in the amount of 100 thousand to 1 million rubles, and if taxes are underestimated, then by no more than 100 thousand rubles. Plus, there will be separate sanctions for repeated violations, for example, for gross violations - up to 50 thousand rubles.

2. Failure to submit financial statements on time to the Federal Tax Service and statistics authorities (Part 1 of Article 15.6, Article 19.7 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation) threatens with a warning or a fine of 300 to 500 rubles.

3. Failure to submit tax returns and other documents on time to the Federal Tax Service, reporting to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation and the Federal Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation (Part 5 of Article 14.5, Article 15.5, Part 1 of Article 15.6, Part 2 of Article 15.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation) is punishable by a warning or a fine of 300 to 3 thousand rubles. Details are in the table.

TABLE: “Responsibility for failure to submit declarations and other documents to the Federal Tax Service, Pension Fund and Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation on time”

Despite the modest amount of fines, there is still practice under these articles.

Example No. 1.

The Federal Tax Service punished the general director under Part 2 of Art. 14.5 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation for the fact that the buyer was not issued a cash receipt. Liability is limited to a warning. Nevertheless, the director challenged the resolution, trying to shift the blame to the chief accountant.

Did not work out.

The court explained to him that in accordance with the available powers and on the basis of Art. 2.4 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, it is the general director who is the official who is punished for the offense.

According to the note to this article, administrative responsibility as officials is borne by managers and other employees who have committed offenses in connection with the performance of organizational and administrative or administrative functions.

The position of the general director is classified as a managerial one; it is he who manages the company and is vested with the authority to perform organizational, administrative and economic functions, the failure of which was the basis for prosecution under Part 2 of Art. 14.5 Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation.

At the same time, the job description of the chief accountant does not contain information about vesting this employee with organizational, administrative or administrative functions. Consequently, under established circumstances, he cannot be recognized as an official and subject of the incriminated offense (Decision of the Khabarovsk Regional Court dated September 13, 2016 No. 21-873/2016).

Conclusion: by default, the general director is the official responsible for everything. Other employees, including the chief accountant, are considered such only if the employment contract and job description stipulate specific duties, failure to fulfill which leads to the commission of an administrative offense.

Example No. 2

The general director of the LLC was brought to justice by the tax inspectorate under Part 1 of Art. 15.6 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for failure to submit an advance payment for property tax on time in the form of a fine in the amount of 300 rubles.

He did not agree with this decision, citing the fact that he was not the subject of the offense, and the accountant should be held accountable.

The director challenged the fine in the courts of two instances. To no avail.

The case reached the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, it supported the businessman and overturned the decisions of the lower courts. The argument worked: the organization provides for the position of chief accountant and his job description contains a clause stating that he is responsible for the untimely provision of various information and reports. Consequently, the chief accountant, and not the director, bears responsibility for failure to submit the calculation on time (Resolution of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 03/09/2017 No. 78-AD17-8).

Conclusion: a detailed description of the duties in the accountant’s job description forces them to be performed and to be held accountable for non-fulfillment. On the other hand, this circumstance can be used to negotiate a higher salary with the manager.

Example No. 3

The organization's archive specialist was fined 500 rubles for the fact that, at the request of the Federal Tax Service, he presented an extract of current accounts, which lacked a number of mandatory details (Part 1 of Article 15.6 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation).

The archivist challenged the fine, citing the fact that the chief accountant should bear responsibility for this, and not him at all.

However, the court upheld the fine.

It was the archivist who sent the extract to the inspectorate. This means that it was he who committed the violation.

In addition, he was notified in advance of the time, date and place of drawing up the protocol, but did not submit any objections to the inspection. And only after the fine was imposed did he remember that submitting documents to the tax office does not fall within his competence (Resolution of the St. Petersburg City Court dated June 7, 2016 No. 4a-660/2016).

Conclusion: the untimely reaction of the punished employee to the actions of government agencies, coupled with his ignorance of his duties, did not allow the responsibility to be shifted to the accountant.

Accountant's responsibility after dismissal

The accountant bears administrative responsibility for the mistakes that he made when he worked in the company, that is, he was an official. Is it possible to hold him accountable after his dismissal, since he is no longer an official?

The answer is yes, you can. Even in a situation of dismissal, the accountant is not released from administrative liability if mistakes were made by him while performing professional duties for a given employer. But there are statutes of limitations for bringing this liability to justice, and they are specified in Art. 4.5 Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation.

Summarize. The preparation and presentation of accounting and budget reports is an important stage in the work of an accountant. In order for the reporting to be reliable, it is necessary to keep records in compliance with legal norms, carefully reflect information on the financial and economic activities of the institution on the accounting accounts, and verify the compliance of the accounting (budget) data with the indicators of the reporting accounting forms. Distortion or incorrect reflection of data in reporting, including incomplete reflection, may be recognized as an offense falling under the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation.

You can purchase services that help you work as an accountant here.

Do you want to install, configure, modify or update 1C? Leave a request!

Did you like the article?

Want to receive articles like this every Thursday? Keep abreast of changes in legislation? Subscribe to our newsletter

Criminal liability

Criminal liability includes evasion of taxes, fees, insurance premiums from an organization or failure to fulfill its duties as a tax agent.
The chief accountant can be prosecuted for this if he consciously (deliberately) participated in the commission of crimes (Articles 199, 199.1, 199.4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, paragraphs 3, 7, 17 of the Resolution of the Plenum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation dated December 28, 2006 No. 64).

The mildest punishment under the basic article. 199 – a fine of 100 thousand rubles, the most severe – imprisonment for up to 6 years with a 3-year deprivation of the right to hold certain positions.

For the perpetrators to fall under the article, the organization must have arrears in contributions, taxes and fees in a large amount (from 5 million rubles) or in an especially large amount (from 15 million rubles).

If the crime is committed for the first time, the perpetrators may be released from criminal liability. Plus, to do this, you need to fully repay the arrears, pay penalties and fines.

It is very difficult to bring a chief accountant to criminal liability, since it is difficult to prove that he deliberately acted to evade taxes, and did not underpay taxes due to insufficient qualifications, a simple mistake, etc.

However, despite the difficulty of evidence, such cases still exist.

Example #1

The chief accountant was found guilty of intentional tax evasion on a particularly large scale due to failure to submit tax returns on profits and VAT.

The court was able to confirm her personal interest in distorting reports, as a result she was fined 200 thousand rubles.

Thus, from the case materials it followed that the accountant convinced management that the company’s current account had been seized. To prevent the production process from stopping, there is only one way - to use her personal special card account. Which is what was done. In addition, she asked the director to sign blank sheets of paper, on which she later printed out payment orders.

Having the right of a second signature, she transferred the organization’s funds to her account.

The defendant argued that the funds transferred from the company's current account to her bank card were not stolen by her, but were transferred from the card to the current account and to the cash desk for the needs of the enterprise.

However, the testimony of witnesses refuted this fact (Appeal ruling of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court dated June 24, 2013 No. 22-6971/2013).

Conclusion: you should not use personal accounts for production needs, or sign blank payments from the director.

In another case, everything ended well for the accountant.

Example No. 2

The entrepreneur, having not shared the business with his partner, decided to bring him under inspection.

Having previously written a letter of resignation from the position of general director, he did the following.

He signed the primary documentation on his relationship with a fictitious company and deliberately provided it to the chief accountant, knowing that she would enter this information into accounting. After filing the declaration, I wrote a letter to the tax office admitting that the relationship with that company was fictitious and thus the company underpaid taxes on a large scale.

The businessman did not take into account the following:

• only he had the right to sign financial documents first;
• settlements with counterparties were carried out exclusively non-cash using the Client-Bank system, the keys to which were also his only;
• only he had access to the press;
• Before sending the declaration, it was always shown to the director, who gave permission to send the reports to the Federal Tax Service.

All these facts allowed the court to establish that the accountant had no intent to evade taxes.
The judges stated that this employee only carried out his official duties, not knowing about the illegal actions of his manager (Appeal ruling of the Moscow City Court dated 03/09/2016 No. 10-2411/2016).

Conclusion: the lack of access to the seal and to the keys of “Client-Bank” diverts suspicion from the chief accountant.

Who bears the greatest responsibility

In the event of unlawful demands on the part of the manager in relation to the chief accountant (the responsible person replacing him), the employee is released from liability if he was forced to commit illegal actions. This conclusion follows from the resolution of the plenum of the RF Armed Forces No. 18 dated 10/24/06. At the same time, the courts have not developed an unambiguous position on the issue of the responsibility of a particular leader on the issue we are considering. The chief accountant must keep this in mind to avoid conflict with the law.

Civil liability

The norms of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation provide for a mechanism of liability in the form of recovery of damages (Articles 15 and 1064).
This type of liability is called civil liability. Tax authorities resort to it by filing a civil claim against the general director or chief accountant for recovery of damage caused to the budget in the form of unpaid taxes by the company.

These people are defendants due to the fact that after a tax audit, but before filing such a claim, they were brought to criminal liability under Art. 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Non-payment of taxes from an organization”).

The following example describes a case involving an accountant to bring him to civil liability, which recently caused a great stir in professional circles. It drew attention to itself due to the fact that the accountant wrote a complaint to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, and it satisfied it. The accountant managed to relieve himself of responsibility.

Example No. 1

The lady provided accounting services to LLC on the basis of a civil contract.

The tax service has identified a multi-million dollar arrears from the organization. Based on the materials collected during the inspection, investigators opened 3 criminal cases under Art. 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation

• to the former CEO;
• for the current CEO;
• for an accountant.

Then all 3 cases were dropped, falling under amnesty.
However, this fact did not prevent the tax authorities from going to court with claims to recover tax arrears from all three of these persons:

• 142 million rubles – from the former general director;
• 8.2 million rubles – from the current manager;
• 2.7 million rubles – from the accountant.

The courts upheld these claims.
The third stage of the story was the appeal of these citizens to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. They did not agree that they should immediately and in full pay for the company’s obligations. After all, subsidiary liability is additional, not instead.

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation agreed and sent their cases for review, drawing the following conclusions.

1. An individual can be brought to civil liability for the company’s debts only if there are no or exhausted legal grounds for collecting the debt at the expense of the organization itself. This is a general rule.

An exception to this is a situation when the court determines that a legal entity serves only as a cover for the actions of the individual controlling it (that is, de facto the organization is not independent). In such a situation, such an individual can be held liable for damage caused to the budget in connection with the commission of a corresponding tax crime.

2. You can only collect arrears and penalties from such a citizen, but not a fine for non-payment of taxes.

3. A criminal case can be used as the basis for a claim for the collection of arrears and penalties from individuals who have been convicted. Even if the case was dismissed on non-rehabilitating grounds (for example, due to an amnesty). At the same time, the very fact of a guilty verdict cannot be regarded by the court as unconditionally confirming the guilt of these individuals in causing harm to the budget.

4. The degree of responsibility (actually the amount recovered) must:

• on the one hand, correspond to the nature of the act, its danger to values ​​protected by law;
• on the other hand, take into account the reasons and conditions for its commission, as well as the personality of the offender and the degree of his guilt. Thus, the adequacy of the consequences for the person held accountable will be guaranteed for the harm caused as a result of his actions (Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of December 8, 2017 No. 39-P).

After the chief accountant’s case was submitted for review to the district court, he refused to collect the arrears from the tax inspectorate (Decision of the Krasnoufimsky District Court of the Sverdlovsk Region dated March 23, 2018 No. 2-1-300/2018).
The Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation considered this resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation to be so important that they created on its basis instructions for collecting arrears from individuals and sent it to all inspections with the requirement that employees responsible for the relevant areas of work be familiarized with it (letter of the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation dated 01/09/2018 No. SA -4-18/ [email protected] ).

The main conclusion: if the company is not liquidated and continues to operate, then the accountant needs to refer to the fact that until the liquidation of the company, it is impossible to transfer its debt to the chief accountant within the framework of civil liability.

Example No. 2

The court refused to recover more than 3 million rubles from the former accountant, who was also the general director. The company filed a statement of claim, citing the fact that this person entered into transactions, but the money for them never reached the company’s cash desk.

However, the court was not satisfied with the evidence presented by the company.

She brought a conclusion on the results of the audit of financial and economic activities. But it was compiled solely by the new director and without the participation of the previous one. This is the first thing.

Secondly, a full audit should have been carried out, which the company did not do.

Thirdly, it was necessary to prove that it was as a result of the poor work of the director-accountant that the financial position of the company worsened. In other words, prove a cause-and-effect relationship between actions and damage. After all, this is an indispensable condition for the recovery of damages. But the company failed.

In this regard, the claim was denied (Resolution of the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District dated February 26, 2019 No. F05-1565/2019).

Conclusion: the courts are not yet ready to place responsibility for losses personally on the accountant, even if the company’s owners have many complaints about his work. The main reason: insufficient evidence that the negative dynamics of the organization’s financial position is due solely to the actions or inactions of the defendant-chief accountant.

Professional liability insurance

Professional liability insurance is the financial protection of the insured against claims from third parties due to mistakes made by him during the performance of his professional activities.

It is also possible to insure not only the risks of an error or omission, but also the costs associated with legal and other proceedings. Moreover, the list of professional activities that can be insured is not limited only to accountants.

Professional liability insurance is most in demand among medical workers, companies that provide expert services, prepare documents of various types, represent the interests of other persons (for example, when supporting civil transactions, etc.

Moreover, according to Russian legislation, some types of activities are subject to mandatory insurance.

These include, in particular:

• notarial;
• evaluative;
• audit;
• some types of outsourcing (for example, accounting);
• activities of arbitration managers;
• real estate;
• cadastral;
• lawyer's office