It is customary to call social payments various benefits and compensations due to a citizen from the state in certain cases. Benefits are usually awarded in connection with the temporary loss of a person's ability to earn money, and compensations reimburse social expenses incurred by him.
Classic examples of benefits are payments in connection with unemployment, compensation for earnings during illness (the so-called sick leave payment), a one-time benefit in connection with the birth of a child, and monthly care for a baby up to one and a half years.
Compensations include funds paid to a citizen as reimbursement of expenses incurred by him. Typically, these costs do not need to be documented. For example, in case of full or partial reimbursement of public transport costs, a certain amount is transferred to the account of the citizen to whom it is entitled. For example, in Moscow, such compensation for travel on public transport is provided to the unemployed in the amount of a single monthly subscription for all types of transport. It is paid monthly to the accounts of those registered with the employment center, in addition to federal unemployment benefits.
Such compensation should be distinguished from the benefits of providing free travel in kind, which are due to pensioners, disabled people and a number of other categories of beneficiaries. In some regions, citizens of these categories are simply transported in public transport free of charge on the basis of presentation of a document on benefits (pension or other certificate) or on a free ticket issued on the basis of an appropriate certificate.
Many payments are due to certain categories of citizens on the basis of federal law from the funds of the social insurance fund (these are, for example, all benefits listed in the first paragraph) or from the federal budget. Such payments are called federal. In addition, in specific regions, additional benefits and compensations may be assigned, made from the regional budget on the basis of local legislation. For example, compensation due to Muscovites in connection with the birth of a child. Or an additional benefit in connection with the birth of a child to all families with permanent or temporary registration in the Yaroslavl region.
Regional social payments can also include local maternity capital, which is due to residents of a particular constituent entity of the Russian Federation once in a lifetime at the birth of a second or subsequent child, if the payment goes directly to the citizen's bank account. At the same time, the amount, conditions, procedure for providing and the possibility of using capital are determined by the legislation of a particular constituent entity of the Russian Federation and can be either softer or stricter than federal norms.
Certain subsidies (for example, those on the waiting list for the purchase of housing in Moscow) can also be attributed to social benefits. Since the money in this case is transferred not directly to the person who provides the service, but to the personal account of the citizen, they can be attributed to payments, despite the fact that the citizen cannot freely dispose of this money - only spend it on solving the housing issue. But it is not a social payment, although it refers to measures of social support, a subsidy for utility bills: after all, the money goes directly to suppliers, and the citizen is only billed. We can say that a sign of a social payment is that money is received (paid) directly to a citizen in one form or another.
