Temporary incapacity allowance, popularly known as report benefit, rest allowance and sickness benefit, is a social security benefit provided to employees only if they meet certain conditions. The wages of employees who are benefiting from temporary incapacity allowance are paid by the Social Security Institution, not by the employer. Thus, it is aimed to prevent loss of income and to eliminate grievances during the periods when the employee is on sick leave.
What is Incapacity Allowance?
Incapacity allowance refers to the payment made by the Social Security Institution (SSI) to the insured employees in order to prevent them from being loss their earnings in case of illness, work accident or occupational disease. However, the employee must be able to submit a medical report to prove that he is sick in order to receive this payment by the SSI. Worker who does not receive a salary allowance from his employer during his sick leave is paid by the SSI.
How to Get Incapacity Allowance?
According to the Social Insurance and General Health Insurance Code No. 5510, there are three different temporary incapacity benefits. In one of these, if the insured employee has an accident at the workplace or receives a report due to an occupational disease related to his/her work, he/she has the right to receive a report fee from the SSI. In addition, if the employee has received a report due to his/her illness, the employee can receive report money, provided that the SSI premium has been paid in the 90 days before the report date.
In addition, female employees have the right to receive report allowance as maternity benefit in the 8 weeks before the birth and 8 weeks after the birth. In multiple pregnancies, this period is 10 weeks before the delivery.
In order to receive this payment, insured employees must meet certain conditions. Accordingly, employees must be incapacitated temporarily due to work accident, illness, maternity or occupational disease and must have a health report from physicians or health boards authorized by the Social Security Institution. At the same time, in these cases, which require inpatient treatment, the employee should not have premium debts. In addition, as with all insured employees, it is expected that at least 90 days of insurance premiums have been reported in the year preceding the birth of those who will receive disability report allowance due to birth.
When Is Incapacity Allowance being paid?
The Social Security Institution begins to make temporary incapacity allowance to the insured employee as to start from the third day of the report. This is so, as, there is no regulation in the law that the first 2-day report fee will be paid by the employer of the employee. Insured employees who receive a 1- or 2-day medical report are not paid any report allowance by the Social Security Institution.
On the other hand, there is an exception from the temporary incapacity allowance for those who have a work accident. Employees who receive a report due to an occupational accident are paid daily by the Social Security Institution as to start from the first day of incapacitation. At the same time, these people are not required to pay a premium for 30 days and work for 90 days backwards for health activation.
Temporary incapacity allowances are deposited into the employee’s account via PTT within 15 days at the latest after the employer submits the employee’s report to SSI. However, after the fee is transferred to the account, there is a condition that it must be received within a certain time frame. Unpaid allowances are sent back to SGK.
How is Incapacity Allowance Calculated?
The social insurance premium payment information of the last 3 months before the report is needed for the incapacity allowance calculation process. If there is no work in the last 3 months, go back and look at the other months. In case of payment in the last 3 months, it is necessary to write down the total payments and the number of days in this process.
At the same time, if there is a premium bonus income, they should also be included in the account.
The total payments are then divided by the total number of days. The number 2 is subtracted from the number of days of absence (because the first 2 days’ allowance is not paid), it is multiplied by the number of days left.
Since 2/3 payment is received for outpatient treatments and 1/2 payment is received for inpatient treatments, the calculation is completed according to the treatment type.
If the insured employee experiences this work accident on the first day of employment, the calculation is made on the basis of the precedent or the earnings of another insured working in the same job.
In order to see the report money, it is necessary to log in to the e-government portal system online. From here, inquiries can be made easily by going to the incapacity allowance inquiry menu.
