How and when to pay vacation pay: a reminder for HR officers and accountants

What is vacation pay

Let's start with the basics. An employee taking annual paid leave is entitled to payment of average earnings for the entire vacation period. This cash payment is called vacation pay.

Annual paid leave is a period of rest guaranteed by labor legislation to employees. The leave is paid by the employer and generally lasts 28 calendar days.

The minimum period for which vacation pay must be paid is three days before the start of the vacation (Part 9 of Article 136 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). It remains to figure out whether three calendar or working days are meant.

Payments before leaving

Article 114 of the Labor Code guarantees the possibility of going on vacation every year. Moreover, such vacations are paid for by management. Before leaving, the employee must be provided with the full amount, which is determined based on the average salary and the number of days worked.

Determining the amount of vacation pay

Calculating the amount of payments due is a simple process. It is enough to multiply the duration of the days of rest provided and the amount of average earnings for the billing period.

For example, an employee has worked for a full year. The average daily salary is 900 rubles, and the duration of vacation is 28 days. To determine the amount of accruals due, it is enough to multiply these numbers. The result will be 25,200 rubles. This is the total amount that is required to be provided to the employee before he goes on vacation.

Attention! The calculation of charges itself is not difficult. However, many have difficulty determining average earnings. Therefore, you should familiarize yourself with this procedure in more detail and find out what affects this indicator.

First of all, the billing period is determined. This is the period of time that an employee worked and received regular wages. As a rule, it is 1 year, but there are often exceptions.

On average, each month has 29.3 days. To determine the billing period, the number of months worked is multiplied by this number.

Example:

The employee worked from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022.
The deadline was fully fulfilled.
Based on this, the billing period will be 29.3 * 12 = 351.

This indicator is subsequently used to determine the average salary for 1 day. First of all, the entire salary volume for the billing year is calculated. The resulting amount is then divided by the number of days in the period.

Example:

For the full 12 months, the employee earned 240 thousand rubles. with a monthly salary of 20 thousand rubles.
To calculate the average salary, this amount must be divided by the number of days in the billing period.
240,000 / 351 = 683 rubles.

This is the average daily salary. To find out how much the employee is entitled to before leaving, this amount is multiplied by the duration of the vacation provided.

Calendar or work?

Indeed, the wording used in Art. 136 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, does not contain clarifications, transfer vacation pay for three calendar or working days. However, as a general rule, if the deadlines for fulfilling obligations are not established in working days, they should be calculated in calendar days (Article 14 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation).

Moreover, if the end of the period falls on a weekend or non-working holiday, then vacation pay is transferred on the previous working day (Part 8 of Article 136 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, Letter of Rostrud dated July 30, 2014 No. 1693-6-1). Thus, it is correct when vacation pay is transferred three calendar days before the start of the vacation.

But there is still a catch: is it necessary to count the day of payment of vacation pay into the three-day period? Rostrud, unfortunately, does not explain this point, but there is arbitration practice on this issue.

What the courts say

Judges are not unanimous about whether the day of payment of vacation pay is included in the three-day period. Some of them believe that it is included (rulings of the Kemerovo Regional Court dated January 26, 2017 No. 33-942/2017, Leningrad Regional Court dated August 6, 2015 No. 33-3731/2015).

Other arbitrators say that three full days, counted from 00:00, must pass between the start date of the vacation and the date of payment of vacation pay. (decisions of the Perm Regional Court dated January 23, 2018 No. 21-46/2018, Chelyabinsk Regional Court dated September 17, 2015 No. 11-11043/2015).

Considering the current arbitration practice, it is safer to issue vacation pay not three days before the vacation, but four .

So, if an employee goes on vacation from August 16, it is better to issue vacation pay no later than August 12. If you pay them on August 13, three full days may not pass before the start of your vacation.

An expert spoke even more about vacations and vacation pay in 2022 in a recorded webinar on “Clerk”: you can watch it right now.

Is it possible to pay vacation pay along with salary?

Is the future vacationer concerned whether the salary for the current month is paid when vacation pay is paid? The employer is not required to do this. But a vacationer can make a request to the company’s accounting department. Can vacation pay be paid along with salary? It's possible, but not necessary! If the employer does not have the opportunity, he will not pay the vacationer wages. However, he will not break the law. When an employee returns to work after vacation, he will be able to receive his salary on the next payment day.

How to pay vacation pay correctly: along with your salary or on the same day

Issuing vacation pay along with salary is not prohibited. As already mentioned, an employee cannot demand that the employer pay wages on the same day as vacation pay. Vacation pay must be paid 3 calendar days before the vacation, and wages must be paid 2 times a month. Payment dates may not be the same. The employer can pay vacation pay earlier. This is not prohibited by law! But payments after the due date are fraught with penalties.

How to pay vacation pay along with salary? If the employer has such an opportunity, he can pay the employee a salary along with vacation pay. Along with these payments, he can receive disability benefits, as well as compensation for unused vacations. All payments to the employee are made from one fund - the wage fund. In order not to take risks, accountants prefer to make vacation pay payments in advance, before the expiration of the 3-day period. If the operation is carried out by a bank, then you need to worry about payments in advance, since the transfer operation will only be carried out on the next banking day.

The amount of vacation pay varies for each employee. Even employees with the same salary may receive different amounts before the vacation. This depends on the number of days actually worked in a given working year. Not taken into account:

days when the employee received average earnings;
sick days;
vacation days at your own expense.

Therefore, an accountant should be careful when calculating vacation compensation for each employee.
If the employee was unable to receive his salary while he was on vacation, he will be able to receive it on the next payday. The entire amount will not go anywhere - it will be deposited. If possible, payment of wages during the vacation will be made and the employee will be able to receive it.

Responsibility for late payment of vacation pay

Failure to pay an employee vacation pay within the period established by law may result in a fine (Part 6, Article 5.27 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation). Moreover, not only the organization, but also an official of the company, for example, a director, will be held accountable.

Amounts of fines:

for a legal entity - from 30,000 to 50,000 rubles;
for an official - from 10,000 to 20,000 rubles. (or warning);
for individual entrepreneurs - from 1,000 to 5,000 rubles.

In case of repeated violation, the fine for failure to transfer vacation pay on time will increase.

In addition, for late payment of vacation pay, an employee has the right to receive compensation (Article 236 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation), which is calculated based on the number of days of delay and the current rate of the Bank of Russia. The employer must independently award compensation to the employee, and even when there is no fault in the payment.

Compensation for leave upon dismissal

Vacation compensation is usually called those amounts that are accrued to employees when they go on vacation. However, rest is not the only way to receive it. If an employee, on his own initiative or at the request of the employer, wants to resign, then he must also be paid compensation amounts. But their calculation and payment terms are already different from those previously stated. Moreover, in some cases, compensation will not only not be calculated, but some funds will still be withheld.

Upon dismissal, the employer is obliged to pay the dismissed employee in full. To do this, accounting calculates:

Salary for a period worked that has not yet been paid.
Bonuses and other mandatory amounts.
Compensation for days of unused vacation.

Please note that we are talking about unused days, and not about the period allocated for the working year. To calculate compensation upon dismissal, a special formula is used.

Payment term

It is believed that upon dismissal, vacation pay is not paid, but so-called estimated compensation is accrued, but these two concepts should not be confused, although the period for their payment is still the same.

The timing of the payment of compensation amounts for vacation not taken is determined by a different article of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation than for the calculation of standard payments for vacation. Article 140 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation stipulates that all accrued amounts for work performed and other incentive payments, including for the duration of the allotted but not chosen vacation, must be issued to the resigning person on the last day of work.

It is not recommended to make payments earlier. This is due to the fact that an employee who resigns of his own free will has the right to withdraw his application at any time and remain in his position. There are exceptions to this rule, for example, in the case when a replacement person has already been hired in his place. In addition, transferring funds on the last day allows, if necessary, to make the necessary accruals and deductions that arose at the last moment.

Calculation procedure

When calculating the vacation amount upon termination of an employment contract, the accountant uses the same approach as in the case of calculating compensation for annual vacation:

First, the average salary of a dismissed employee per day is calculated. For the calculation, a period of 12 calendar months is still taken, and income is considered to be funds that were accrued as an incentive for work performed.
Then it is determined how many days of vacation the resigning employee is entitled to.
The product of the average daily income and the number of vacation days due is considered “dirty” compensation, from which tax is calculated.

The calculation procedure contains the only small difference - vacation days are determined based on the period worked, and are not paid in advance.

In order to calculate how much compensation must be paid to the dismissed person, it is necessary to calculate the non-vacation period. For each month worked, an employee receives 2.33 days of vacation, which adds up to 28 days per year. If the employee had additional annual leave under the contract, this should also be taken into account. The calculation is made monthly. If less than 15 days are worked in a month, then it is excluded from the calculation, and if more, it is considered full.

To calculate how many days should be compensated, the difference in months between the beginning of the working year and the date of dismissal is calculated. All resulting full months are multiplied by 2.33. The resulting number is rounded according to generally accepted rules - up to 0.4 inclusive is discarded, from 0.5 and above it is rounded to one.

Let's sum it up

The minimum period for which vacation pay must be issued to an employee is three days before the start of the vacation (Part 9 of Article 136 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). Taking into account the opinion of the courts, it is safer to transfer vacation pay even earlier - four days in advance.
There are considerable fines for late payment of vacation pay.

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