Secret tricks of tax specialists for a quick check of 6-NDFL

Help 2-NDFL

Certificate 2-NDFL is a document that allows you to obtain information about the income of a certain individual to whom income was paid and personal income tax was withheld. The form of the document was approved by Order of the Federal Tax Service No. ММВ-7-11/ [email protected] dated 10.30.2015. The certificate contains the following fields that require filling out:

• the year for which the document is drawn up, date and reference number;
• information about the employer (tax agent);
• information about the employee (full name, tax identification number, date of birth, registration address);
• the main table, which reflects the following information: month of accrual, income code, payment amount, deduction code, personal income tax amount;
• employee tax deductions;
• total amounts for income and withholding tax.

The certificate is signed by the employer or an authorized person, after which the document is certified by a seal.

Why do they provide 2-personal income tax to the bank?

Certificate 2-NDFL is a document confirming the amount of income of an individual. All information contained in this document is confirmation of the employee’s official income. When determining a borrower's solvency, many banks take into account only the income indicated in the certificate. But other credit institutions may also take into account other income of an individual.

How to choose an accountant

When hiring an accountant or choosing an outsourcing company, focus on an objective assessment of the applicant’s professional qualities, and not on recommendations from friends.

How to check the qualifications of an accountant when applying for a job

Written test

To weed out incompetent specialists, we recommend conducting a written test among candidates for the position of accountant.

Many accounting websites offer professional test options for accountants. Select a test that matches your company's activity, or use our test option with answers.

The questions in the tests can be complex, designed for a high level of theoretical training of a specialist. If the applicant correctly answered only 2/3 of the questions, then this is already a good result and should be admitted to the next test.

If during testing an accountant answered 60% of the questions correctly, this is a good result.

Knowledge of accounting news

When starting to search for a competent specialist, subscribe to the accounting newsletter, for example: “Glavbukh”, “Clerk.ru”, “Glavnaya Ledger” or ppt.ru.

When interviewing a candidate, select a news item from the newsletter and ask the candidate what he thinks about it. For example: “I heard that the State Duma has adopted a bill to exclude movable property from the list of objects of taxation starting next year. What do you know about this?

Competent accountant up to date with accounting news

Dates of dismissal from previous jobs

Be sure to pay attention to the dates the candidate left his previous jobs. If these dates fall at the end and beginning of the reporting period, this is an alarming signal. Perhaps the accountant started accounting and quit in order not to submit reports and avoid responsibility.

Critical dates for dismissal of an accountant: from March 20 to April 20, from June 20 to July 20, from September 20 to October 20, from December to the end of January. A responsible specialist will not allow you to leave behind “tails” that create problems for the manager. It is worthwhile to find out the reason for the accountant’s dismissal during such periods.

The responsible accountant will not resign at the beginning and end of the reporting period

A small trading organization was choosing an accountant who would keep records as a single person. Of the 57 people who came for the interview, only 8 were able to correctly answer 2/3 of the questions from the accounting test. During the subsequent conversation, only 2 of the 8 remaining were able to comment on the accounting news. The remaining 49 “professionals”, who could not even answer the test questions, are currently doing accounting somewhere.

Recommendations for choosing an outsourcing company

Some small business owners do not hire in-house accountants and use specialized accounting firms. This allows you not to depend on vacation or sick leave and reduces the organization’s expenses for social contributions.

Here are some tips on what to look for when choosing an outsourced accounting firm:

1. Read the company’s website - there should be accounting news there.

Every accounting firm that respects its clients has a website where it posts accounting news and useful information for entrepreneurs. Often, through a personal account on such a site, an entrepreneur has access to his accounting registers and documents.

2. Study the recommendations and reviews about the company on the outsourcer’s website - they must be real.

Please note the review dates. If they are all in the same time interval and there is no replenishment of the “collection”, perhaps they were collected on purpose. Check with the reviewers whose reviews are posted to see if they are currently employed by the accounting firm you are interested in.

3. Find out the scope of activity of most of the companies that the company serves - it’s good if yours is the same.

It’s great if among the outsourcer’s clients there are organizations conducting activities similar to yours. If there are no such organizations, it may turn out that the firm's accountants will not know the industry nuances of your type of activity.

4. Study the contract and the full list of services that will be provided as part of the fulfillment of the obligation to maintain accounting records.

This will help determine the boundaries of the outsourcing company’s responsibility and eliminate further disputes.

How banks check 2-NDFL

Important! To check 2-NDFL, the bank can use several methods. First of all, the document is examined visually and I check whether it corresponds to the established form. If a citizen provides a fake certificate to the bank, this will first of all lead to him being blacklisted, not only in this bank, but also in other credit institutions.

When visually checking the certificate, bank employees pay attention to:

• correct filling of income and deduction codes;
• compliance with accrued amounts and withholdings;
• amounts of social deductions;
• correspondence of the data about the individual in the document to his passport;
• correspondence of information about the employer in the certificate and on the seal.

If in the last month an individual’s salary was significantly increased, or its amount does not correspond to the average salary in the region, this may raise questions among bank employees. If any discrepancies are identified, the bank may refuse to issue a loan. Moreover, he will not need to explain the reason for the refusal.

Also, for verification, bank employees can call the employer in order to check the information contained in the certificate. They can call the accounting department, the human resources department, or the department in which the individual applying works. In this way, the bank checks the very fact of a person’s work, as well as information about whether the employee plans to quit in the near future (Read also the article ⇒ How to get a 2-NDFL certificate online).

Important! An organization is not required to provide information about its employee over the phone. This is due to the fact that it is impossible to accurately identify who is calling, and the company is not obliged to disclose information about its employee to third parties.

A telephone verification also does not give the bank guarantees of the authenticity of the certificate, because an employer can issue a fake document, or a dummy person can answer the phone number indicated in the certificate.

Another way to check the document is to request the Pension Fund. However, only banks related to the state can apply to the Pension Fund with such a request. We are talking about such banks as Sberbank, Rosselkhozbank and VTB. By requesting information on deductions, they can determine the real income of a potential borrower. The disadvantage of such a check is that information from the Pension Fund can only be obtained for the past year.

Certain banks have access to personal information about an individual on the government services portal. But in this way it is not possible to check everyone, but only those who have allowed access to the requested information. This is usually done by those citizens who have official income and have no conflicts with the tax authorities.

If access to an individual’s information on the portal is closed, then the bank will not be able to check the certificate.

Bank security officers may also have contacts with tax authorities (informal), they can check all the financial information in the document. If a falsification of a document is detected, the loan will be denied without explanation.

The bank's security service has recently also used this method of document verification. They send a request to the bank for copies of personal income tax payment slips. Thus, they check the salaries of company employees.

Important! If an individual requests a large loan amount, the bank checks the certificates very carefully. This happens, for example, with a mortgage loan. Such verification usually takes several days, as verification is carried out in different ways. If an individual submits a request for a small consumer loan, the bank may limit itself to only checking the certificate visually.

How to check form 6-NDFL before submitting it to the tax office

Before sending 6-NDFL to the inspector, you should check it for compliance with the form of the report form and the electronic format, as well as for the correctness of completion and accuracy of the indicated indicators in the sections of the report. The control ratios developed and established by law, which were developed by the tax authorities themselves, will help to verify the correctness of the calculations. These indicators will help you detect inconsistencies in the form of simple typos and analyze whether the report has been compiled correctly. The first section of 6-NDFL contains all the information on the enterprise on a cumulative basis for all previous quarters from the beginning of the year, including the current one, and the second section contains information only for the current quarter. The sections perform different functions, so they do not correspond with each other. Therefore, to the assumption: should the amount of accrued income from section 1 of the 6-NDFL report go with the total amount from section 2, the answer is negative. No control relationships between sections can be established.

What is the liability for a fake 2-NDFL certificate?

Important! The 2-NDFL certificate will be considered fake if the individual who applied does not work for the specified company, or if the income indicated in the document is not true.

The employee can agree with his employer or accounting department so that the “required” amount of income is indicated on the certificate. However, if the bank discovers this, the consequences may vary. The minimum that can happen is a loan refusal. Such a citizen is usually blacklisted and will have difficulty obtaining a loan in the future.

The situation will be different if the bank learned about the falsity of the document after the loan was issued. If, of course, the borrower fulfills his loan payment obligations properly, then most likely there will be no complaints from the bank. If the loan is not repaid, the borrower may be held accountable, including criminal liability.

According to Art. 165 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for punishment for an individual in the form of a fine in the amount of up to 300 thousand rubles, forced labor for up to 2 years, or restriction of freedom for up to 2 years . To do this, the bank will need to prove that the individual’s actions in providing a fake certificate were intentional. Criminal liability is also provided for legal entities that issued a fake 2-NDFL certificate.

Consequences of a desk audit for legal entities

If your calculation of 6-NDFL did not raise any questions from the tax authorities, then no further events will occur after the audit. However, if any discrepancies are identified, you will be notified and asked questions. You will have to answer them, explaining the correctness of your actions when filling out the calculation, or submit an updated report that eliminates the mistakes made.

Personal income tax agents who violate the rules for entering data into the report face the following penalties:

• If a tax agent submits a calculation with incorrect data to the inspectorate, he will be subject to a fine of 500 rubles. according to Art. 126.1 Tax Code of the Russian Federation.
• If, as a result of checking the calculation, an underpayment of tax is revealed, a fine equal to 20% of the amount owed may be imposed by decision of the tax authority (Article 123 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation). Tax officials will also send a demand for payment of arrears and the corresponding amount of penalties. The amount of penalties depends on the amount of arrears and the length of delay.

Read about common difficulties when preparing calculations in the publication “How to check 6-NDFL for errors?”

Answers to common questions

Question: The employer gave me a certificate 2-NDLF, which was signed by the acting director. Can I provide it to the bank?

Answer: Yes, the certificate can be signed by both the chief accountant or manager, and the acting executive officer. But in this case, a power of attorney confirming this must be attached to the certificate.

Question: A bank employee requests a meeting with company managers to verify the employee’s salary level. Is this legal?

Answer: Quite, there are no obstacles to this.

Question: How does the bank verify the authenticity of the 2-NDFL certificate through the tax service website?

Answer: In this way, the bank can check the company that issued the certificate to the individual. Using the TIN, today you can find out information about the company on the website, and from this it will be possible to conclude whether the certificate is fake or not.