>
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:19:15 -0500
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2)
Unfortunately, it is an urban legend that there is some type of hookup.
For Swiss, it is worthwhile noting that the Federal Council a few
years back during the 10th or 11th AHV-AVS legislation, purposely
designed the voluntary AHV-AVS portion of the bill that it is de
facto abolished for younger Swiss living abroad. Unless you have
already contributed a long time, or are a beneficiary of payments out
of the system, it is difficult to stay in there.
This is due to the heavy deficit the Voluntary AVS-AHV ran, as there
were a lot of Swiss abroad paying in only the minimum amount as
yearly contribution, and an even larger number of Swiss living abroad
receiving maximum monthly payments due their long years of paying
into the system. The milchbuechli calculation for the Swiss
government was easy: 42 YEARLY of CHF 500 per year contribution gets
the insured a MONTHLY payment of CHF2200 (or so, if married).
Here is what they did:
1) You can only join the Voluntayr AHV-AVS one year from the date you
exit the mandatory one in CH
2) once you leave voluntary AHV-AVS, you can never rejoin (only the
mandatory one when you return to CH).
3) If you are a member, one has to pay the full amount on your gross
salary (9.7% or something) as a yearly contribution (since there is
no employer for you to cover half this percentage).
A simple Net Present Value calculation will make it clear that it is
crazy to pay 10% of your current salary for a cut of 1/42 of the
future maximum monthly payment from AHV-AVS. For any Swiss earning
an income (maybe not students or PhD, or PostDocs, etc.), it makes
more sense to have a contribution gap (i.e. Beitragsluecke) than to
join voluntary AHV-AVS when living abroad for a few years. That is
true for any country outside the EU, since with the bilateral
agreements your contributions in any EU government system are
recognized by AHV-AVS.
Of course, the bigger problem of not participating in voluntary AHV-
AVS is the fact that you are not covered with a disability insurance
that comes with the system (i.e. IV). Then for 10% of your gross
income, you can buy some nice coverage in the open market...
If you are not sure how long you are not going to be part of AHV-AVS,
then you might want to think about saving money to cover the gap
(maybe not with tech stocks..;)).
But since you left CH, then you are a risktaker anyway and who needs
all this safety thinking?
Regards
Ralf
Received on Sat Feb 03 2007 - 17:46:39 PST
