*The measures that the government wants to take still need to be converted into law before they enter into force. Little is currently known about the exact nature of this conversion and implementation. The measures may therefore still be subject to changes. We will monitor their ongoing implementation and provide information as soon as we know more.
The government wants to prioritise a mandatory supplementary pension for all employees, including contract workers in the public sector. The employer’s contribution to this supplementary pension must be at least 3% of the annual salary by 2035 at the latest.
Sectors where this 3% level is not yet being met will also have to make an extra effort in this respect by means of sectoral agreements.
The contributions that an employer pays into a supplementary pension plan are only tax-deductible if the statutory and supplementary pensions together do not exceed 80% of the most recent normal annual salary. This deduction restriction is also known as the 80% rule. In practice, the 80% rule gives rise to a great deal of interpretation and debate about the calculation parameters to be used, which in turn leads to legal uncertainty.
The coalition agreement also includes plans to reform the 80% rule. The government wants to calculate the 80% rule on the basis of identifiable and updated parameters that take account of the employee’s career to date, along the same lines as the calculation of the Wijninckx contribution (the special levy on high supplementary pensions).
Under current tax rules, it is less advantageous from a tax perspective to take a supplementary pension in the form of an annuity than as a capital sum. The government therefore plans to look into how taking a supplementary pension as an annuity can be prevented from being fiscally disadvantageous.
The Wijninckx contribution is the special social security contribution that an employer must pay when the contributions that have been paid towards a supplementary pension on an annual basis exceed the pension target (the so-called Wijninckx threshold) for at least one of its employees or self-employed persons. This special social security contribution is currently 3% and will rise to 6% from 1 January 2028.
The new government’s coalition agreement states that pension contributions above the Wijninckx threshold will be subject to a higher contribution. However, it does not specify whether this higher contribution is in addition to the already planned increase from 3% to 6% (from 1 January 2028).
The solidarity contribution is a contribution that is withheld by the pension institution from the gross amount of the supplementary pension when it is paid out. It ranges between 0% and 2%, depending on the amount of the total pension paid out.
The coalition agreement provides for an increase in this solidarity contribution, which will only apply to the part of the capital above 150,000 euros. The amount of this increase is not specified in the coalition agreement.
We are continuously monitoring these measures and will let you know as soon as it becomes clearer how they will be implemented.
