Almost all experts agree that it would be more than desirable if people, if they wanted and could, continued to work for a few years beyond the age of 65, especially if they are well qualified. This overcomes the shortage of skilled workers, ensuring greater added value, additional consumer spending by these people and ultimately more tax revenue for the tax authorities. Win-win, so to speak.
However, in Austrian practice, a bizarre legal provision ensures that it is not at all attractive for those affected to actually continue working in retirement. Because whoever takes it not only has to pay twice the health insurance as a thank you (without the need to get a plaster cast twice when a broken arm), but also has to pay a small contribution to pension insurance – even if He has already started getting pension.
Anyone who earns something close to the so-called maximum contribution base, currently around 5,800 euros a month, is allowed to pay up to a third of their pension back into pension insurance, in the form of an idiot tax.
To adopt this you have to have a very sporty attitude towards work. Most people gratefully give up this luxury and enjoy their retirement, although it would be better to add a few more active years instead of hanging out on a cruise ship with a few thousand other retirees.
The ÖVP originally wanted to solve this fiasco in the current legislative period in a way that is sensible: logically no longer having to pay pension contributions for anyone who continues to work after the age of 65.
Of course, the Greens didn’t want that – because they couldn’t score points with their customers with it.
So now a perfect deal has been reached, which the government celebrates as a success, but on closer inspection looks more like a mistake.
It was decided that only additional income of less than one thousand euros per month would no longer be subject to pension insurance, and any income above that would not. And: The whole thing is limited to the next two years, what happens after that is unclear.
This is a problem because the limit of one thousand euros per month only provides minimal relief for those who, whether qualified as engineers, in medicine or in the IT sector, earn a relatively good salary in the area of the maximum contribution base. . Or even more. Instead of spending a thousand and two hundred euros a month, as they do now (for example, as a freelancer), in the future they will have to pay one hundred euros less in pension contributions – which is not very impressive. And there is no solid argument for not stopping the work.
Even more so, because it has already become possible to earn up to five hundred euros per month without paying taxes. Given the inflation of the past few years, this amount should have been increased to seven hundred euros anyway; The thousand euros now fixed are practically an inflation-adjusted integer of the previous position.
Of course, you might see this as a luxury problem for a relatively small group, but it is also about something else: namely, a hidden tendency in politics not to address identified problems radically and consistently, but rather Selling fake solutions and misleading packages. Hope not to be caught for becoming.
The consequences of this confusing solution in this specific case can be easily calculated. Especially those highly qualified, well-earning older workers who want to stick around for a few more years will immediately calculate the government’s offer, realize there is a solution here – and not care about continuing to work. do.
Unfortunately, this is not the only problem that has apparently been solved using the method “It is not important what is achieved, what is said is enough”. We experience the same in migration, education and health policy.
As we all know, politics is “drilling thick boards”. But for countless ordinary sailors in contemporary politics, unfortunately, the perception is that the mere sight of drills sends them into panic mode.
