Contributing opinions to the draft Law on Social Insurance (amended), the Department of Home Affairs of Phu Tho province and the Department of Home Affairs of Tuyen Quang reflected obstacles in the process of resolving retirement benefits for employees who are individual business households, who have participated in social insurance (BHXH) before July 1, 2025 (enough 20 years of compulsory social insurance contributions, including the time as business households) and are eligible for retirement benefits.
In the transitional clause of the 2024 Law on Social Insurance, it has been stipulated that for some subjects who participated in social insurance before the effective date of this Law (before July 1, 2025), and have compulsory social insurance contributions for 20 years or more, the monthly pension level is at least equal to the reference level.
Meanwhile, Resolution No. 78/2025/UBTVQH15 of the National Assembly Standing Committee also stipulates, recording the time when business households have paid compulsory social insurance before July 1, 2025 to serve as a basis for resolving social insurance benefits according to the provisions of the law on social insurance.
Therefore, localities propose that the drafting agency supplement the group of individual business households that have been recorded for compulsory social insurance contribution time before July 1, 2025, and have compulsory social insurance contribution time of 20 years or more, then the monthly pension level is at least equal to the reference level.
The reason is that individual business households with social insurance participation time before July 1, 2025 have been recorded as compulsory social insurance contribution time. But this content has not been specified in detail, leading to difficulties in the process of determining benefits for employees.
Explaining the above content, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that according to the provisions of the 2014 Social Insurance Law, individual business households are not subject to compulsory social insurance participation.
The fact that the social insurance agency has implemented compulsory social insurance collection for this group of subjects in the past time is not consistent with the provisions of law at that time, leading to a lack of strict control over the basis of contribution and contribution level.
By the 2024 Law on Social Insurance, the lowest pension level has been stipulated as the reference level, but it is only applied to groups of subjects that have been clearly regulated by law, with strict management of salaries as a basis for contributions, such as cadres, civil servants, public employees, armed forces and employees with labor contracts.
Although Resolution No. 78/2025/UBTVQH15 has allowed recording the compulsory social insurance contribution period before July 1, 2025 of business households to serve as a basis for resolving regimes, this is actually a solution to remove obstacles to ensure the rights to contribution period for employees, which does not mean completely uniform in terms of minimum pension benefit standards with subjects who comply with regulations from the beginning.
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, if the lowest pension level is applied at the reference level for this group, it will cause an imbalance between the actual contribution level (which can be paid at a very low level due to being uncontrolled in the past) and the benefit level.
At the same time, it creates unfairness to those who participate in voluntary social insurance or other groups of workers, which is not consistent with the principle of social insurance, which is that the level of compulsory social insurance benefits and voluntary social insurance are calculated based on the contribution level and social insurance contribution period; there is sharing among participants.
The 2024 Law on Social Insurance, effective from July 1, 2025, has expanded the scope of compulsory social insurance participation for many groups of subjects, including individual business households. The compulsory social insurance contribution level for individual business households is 3% to the sickness and maternity fund, 22% to the pension and death fund.
Regarding the basis for contribution, the Law stipulates that business households can choose salary as the basis for compulsory social insurance contribution, but the lowest is equal to the reference level, and the highest is 20 times the reference level at the time of contribution.
