MOSCOW, May 22 (RAPSI) – The State Duma passed in the second and third readings on Friday amendments to the Tax Code stipulating additional benefits for citizens, businesses and NGOs over the coronavirus pandemic, according to a statement of the lower house of parliament.

Under the bill, fringes for social institutions employees for the period from April 15 to June 15 would be exempted from income tax. The first payments must be made in June.

The amount of fringe benefits was earlier set by the President. Doctors working in social institutional are to receive 40,000 rubles for a 2-week working shift; those who personally helped coronavirus-infected patients are to get 60,000 rubles (about $850). Social and teaching employees, medium-level medical personnel and administrative staff are to be paid 25,000 rubles and those working with COVID-19 + people are to receive 35,000 rubles; 15,000 and 20,000 rubles for junior staff; 10,000 and 15,000 for technical personnel respectively.

Tax expenditures are to be lowered for organizations and individual entrepreneurs without charge help businesses and socially-oriented NGOs in the fight against the infection. Their costs of acquisition of equipment to stop the spread of COVID-19, its diagnostics and treatment will be classified as production expenditures, the document reads.

Moreover, according to the draft law, self entrepreneurs, not employers, operating in the suffered fields would be subject to insurance contributions for compulsory pension insurance in the fixed amount of 20,318 rubles for the period of 2020.

Also, small and medium businesses of the most suffered areas as well as socially-oriented NGOs would be exempt from paying taxes and insurance payments charged in the first quarter of 2020, the document stipulates.