New Year in Russia starts with a lot of positive changes in the social sphere, related primarily to various federal payments to individual groups of citizens. The most important innovation of 2018 is the introduction of benefits for the first child. The will only be provided for disadvantaged persons, the size of the benefit will depend on the region (in particular, the residents of Moscow will receive 14252 rubles every month for the first child during 1.5 year, but only if the total income of the family is not above 84.3 thousand rubles per month).
About 340 thousand families may receive a new social benefit, on average the amount of monthly payments will be 10.5 thousand rubles this year. As for the maternity capital for the second child, from now on it can be received every month.
The second important event for Russians is an increase in the minimum wage, which is equal to 9489 rubles now. The government undertook to raise the minimum wage to a subsistence level within a year.
The retirement pension of 40 million non-working pensioners will be indexed by 3.7%, on average this means an increase of 500 rubles. Pensions of working pensioners will be still frozen. Salaries of the military increased by 4%, combined with military pensions, this is important for 2.6 million Russian citizens, since police officers, employees of the National Guard and firemen are now equated with military pensioners.
Children of unknown parents will receive a payment of 10068 rubles until the age of 18, for full-time students this payment will be extended until the age of 23. Salaries of federal officials and diplomats (about 500 thousand people) will be indexed by 4%,which would be the first indexation for them since 2013.
Excise tax on fuel increased by 0.5 rubles ($0.0087) per liter.
All software and websites related to circumventing internet filtering are banned in Russia, including anonymizers and VPN services which do not implement the blacklist of the regulator agency Roskomnadzor, and instructional material on how to do so.
