Your Pension from Austria
The Austrian Pension Insurance
In Austria there are three main carriers for the mandatory Pension Insurances: the “Pension Insurance Authority” (Pensionsversicherungsanstalt), the “Insurance Authority for Rail and Mining” (Versicherungsanstalt für Eisenbahnen und Bergbau) and the “Social Security Authority for Commerce and Farmers” (Sozialversicherungsanstalten der gewerblichen Wirtschaft und die der Bauern).
Regardless with which of the three institutions lie your claims, we will investigate for you whether, when and to what amount your benefit(s) will come due.
Let us take care of your interest and we will optimize your pension and investigate how we can increase the yields of your contributions.
Do a quick check to find out whether you are entitled to draw a pension from the Austrian Social Security Administration!
Invest half an hour of your time - we will do the rest!
Here is how:
Click here or call us at +1-505-328-7777 and ask for our questionnaire. Fill out the questionnaire and send it back to us via e-mail or the Postal Service.
We will analyse your data and quickly give you a Feedback.
There are no obligations to you and you alone decide how to proceed. If your data shows that upon retirement you are owed any money from the Austria government we offer to you our expert services to get you your money! This is solely your decision!
For the questionnaire and its quick analysis we will charge a one-time fee of $ 25.00
Social Security Benefits
The Austrian Social Security Insurance offers the following:
(a) a pension for men at age 65 and for women at age 60,
(b) disability benefits in case you are not able to work,
(c) survivor benefits,
(d) orphan benefits
Men who were born before October 1st, 1952 and women born before October 1st, 1957 who have contributed into the system for quite some time can under certain conditions apply for pension benefits ahead of the respective mandatory ages.
In case an insured worker becomes so ill that it is apparent that he or she will not be able to go back to work for quite a long time, that worker can apply for disability benefits. Those benefits will be granted on a limited basis and the amount of the benefits will depend on the number and amount of paid contributions as well as on the degree by which the income has been reduced.
In case of the death of a spouse the surviving spouse (depending on the age) can receive survivor benefits. Under certain circumstances these benefits can be limited.
In case one or both parents of a child die before the child turns 18, the surviving child can receive semi- or full orphan benefits. If the surviving child is still in job-training or any other job-related schooling the age limit will go up to 27.
Conditions for receiving a pension
In order to receive Social Security benefits you have to meet the following qualifications:
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Next to the mandatory retirement age the following provisions (waiting periods) for receiving a pension must be met:
A minimum of 180 months of mandatory or voluntary contributions,
or
a minimum of 300 months including substitute periods,
or
a minimum of 180 months of contributions within 360 calendar months before the commencement of pension payouts.
The waiting periods for receiving a premature pension are as follows:
A minimum of 240 months of mandatory contributions,
or
a minimum of 240 months of contributions within 360 calendar months before the commencement of pension payouts.
To receive disability benefits or survivor benefits or orphan benefits, the waiting periods are as follows:
A minimum of 180 months of mandatory or voluntary contributions,
or
a minimum of 300 months including substitute periods,
or
a minimum of 60 months of contributions within the last 120 calendar months if benefits are to commence before the insured person reaches the age of 50. For persons older than 50 the waiting periods extend in steps according to the age of the insured.
Types of Insurances
It is the rule that all employees need to contribute to a mandatory pension insurance. The employer withholds the amount of the contribution from the employee's monthly paycheck and forwards the money to the insurance carrier.
There is also the possibility to insure oneself on a voluntary basis.
It is important that you determine whether you have in the past made voluntary contributions and whether those contributions have been properly credited to your account with the insurance carrier.
In order to increase the yield of your contributions you can in the future enter into a voluntary insurance scheme.
Please consult us! We will make sure that all of your contributions have been properly credited to your account and will advise you how to optimize your pension.
Insurance Categories
As an employee your pension insurance is mandatory. Your employer deducts every month from your salary your mandatory contributions to the pension insurance and forwards that amount of money to the insurance carrier. The insurance carrier registers the month for which the money has been paid and the amount of your salary by which the amounts of your contributions are determined. The same applies to workers who are in an apprenticeship or any other form of professional training.
Under certain conditions you may continue your monthly contributions on a voluntary basis and/or at a reduced rate, although it is not mandatory to continue with your contributions.
Male and females who have raised their own children (in Austria or conditionally in Switzerland or any country, which is a member of the European Union) will receive credits on their accounts with the insurance carrier in the form of monthly contributions.
All paid and credited monthly contributions on your insurance carrier's account will be added up and will determine the time-period you have been insured. Together with the amount of your contributions it will determine the amount of your pension pay-outs.
Therefore it is of absolute importance that ALL monthly contributions are registered by the insurance carrier and credited to your account.
We will help you with making sure that your account is properly credited by investigating and providing proof to the insurance carrier in cases of missing data.
Procedures of the Austrian Pension Insurances
In general all pension insurances use a fully digitalized system, which makes all data instantly available. However, the laws and regulations of the Austrian insurance carriers are different, complex and are subject to constant changes. This results in rather time-consuming procedures every time a request or claim works its way through their systems. So it will take on the average about three months until an application for a pension has been approved even when all necessary documentation has been provided and accepted. Additional requests like the approval of new documentation and/or the adding on of time-periods require a lengthy processing time, which can take up to 24 months.
Unfortunately we have no influence on the duration it takes to process a claim or request. The best time-saving procedure is to (with your help) provide the insurance carrier with as much and as precise information as we can. That way we avoid time-consuming check backs by the Social Security administrations and financial losses to you.
When you make your retirement plans please take into consideration the duration it may take for your claim(s) to work its way through the system. Start your application process now so that by the time you have reached your retirement age all documentation is at hand and all questions have been answered. That way the time it will take to process your application will be short and you will be able to receive your pension payouts immediately.
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Only after an application has been submitted to the Social Security Administration will a pension be approved. The application consists of several pages, which the applicant has to fill out. In order to process the application the Austrian Social Security Administration requires a time-period of approximately four to six months, provided all documentation is available, there are no question-marks, no back-checks and there are no requests for you to provide additional proofs.
Taking this into consideration we suggest that you at the latest at the age of 60 or at least 5 years before your planned retirement have us check the status of your Austrian insurance account to make sure all information has been recorded and that those records are correct so that you will receive the maximum possible pay-outs. For example, had any of your previous Austrian employers submitted incorrect or incomplete contributions you would find out about this only after the Social Security Administration had approved your pension. It would then require a rather extensive, expensive and time-consuming effort on your part to have the necessary corrections made to your pension account, during which time you will receive no pension or at the very best only a token amount.
Therefore we urge you, regardless of your present age, to already now gather and secure all job-related details of any professional activities you had in Austria and clear these information with the Austrian Social Security Administration. You should do so even if you have plans to again work in Austria at any time in the future. Out of experience we can tell you that it is very difficult to correct mistakes after 10 or 20 years that were made by an Austrian employer or an Austrian public office. To correct such mistakes after such a long period of time you would need extensive proofs; and the more time has passed the more difficult it will be to obtain those proofs.
Make good use of the time until you plan to retire. Please appoint us now so we can assist you with clearing all the details.
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All pension insurance carriers record the times, your annual contributions, the amounts of your salaries and all other for your pension relevant information and data in your pension account (Versicherungsdatenauszug). This account reflects your professional career as far as it is important for the calculation of your pension. Any missing data or false recordings or mistakes will have a negative impact on the amount of your eventual pension pay outs.
Please let us establish for you what information has been credited to your pension account and make sure that all the data are correct.
We will point out to you how you can check the correctness and completeness of these recordings and assist you if needed in the necessary corrections and/or supplementations of your data.
Your pension account is as important as your bank account! Make sure you are in control of it!
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You can at any time, even after many years, request corrections to your pension account. If there are missing or incorrect data on your account you are by-and-large not held responsible for these mistakes. However, you are responsible for proving that the information is indeed incorrect. Acceptable proofs would be job-related documentation, certificates, salary statements and even the testimony of a witness.
We can offer you our specialized service in assisting you with the correction(s) of incorrect or missing data on your pension account. We conduct our research at the source through our German partner, who will, if necessary, interrogate witnesses, check with public offices (records) and even find individuals who could shed light on your problems.
Because this may expand into an extensive effort we will advise you on whether it will be worth our time and your expense if the outcome will result in only a marginal increase in your pension pay-outs.
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Should our research show that there are missing time-periods and/or contributions on your pension account or that for example one or more of your salaried jobs have not been recorded, that will, of course, have a negative impact on the amount of your eventual pension pay-outs.
We will assist you in the research and in adding the missing time-periods and contributions to your pension account. In case of any missing documentation we will go to the source and assist you in your investigations. We will consult witnesses and check with official departments and offices and even try to find certain person(s) if he/she could shed some light on your problem.
Should it become apparent that our research will be rather extensive and time-consuming we will be able to offer you an estimation of whether the efforts and moneys required for finding the requested documentation will be worth the increase in your pension-pay-outs.
Please keep in mind that we are the experts!
Insurance Periods
Every month during which you paid either a mandatory or voluntary contribution is considered an insurance period. This and all other periods have to be credited on your account with the insurance carrier.
In addition a person can receive credits for insurance periods for which he or she do not have to pay the monthly contributions. For example, a person may receive credits for time spent on raising children, for the duration of being unable to work due to illness or unemployment and receiving disability or unemployment benefits, and time spent as a civil servant.
Please appoint us so that we can look into these matters for you and make sure that your account has been fully and proper credited with all time periods. This will increase the yield of your pension. We are the experts.
Austrian Pensions in the US
In General
As the recipient of social security payments from a Austrian insurance carrier you can have your payments transferred into a bank account in the country of your residence abroad such as in any country of the EU, in Switzerland, the USA and Canada. You also can have your pension transferred to Australia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chile, Israel, Croatia, Macedonia, the Philippines, Serbia, Montenegro, Tunisia and Turkey.
You can apply for your pension with the Austrian Social Security Administration from any country outside of Austria. All you have to do is request the proper application forms from the Administration in German(!) and make sure that all supporting documentation is stated in that language
We are specialized in assisting pensioners who are living abroad and will handle all business with the Swiss insurance carriers in a professional way.
We are offering our 'wrap-around' service, which goes beyond the basic correspondence such as the assistance with your application for pension, our prognosis, making sure that your account shows all time-periods and substitute times. We gather all necessary proofs and documentation and investigate missing records and more.
Pensions From Foreign Countries
In General
Question: Besides having your social security contributions deducted from your paycheck in Austria, did you ever pay contributions in any other country?
In general you can, provided you have met all conditions in the respective countries, receive social security payments simultaneously from any country you have worked in and made your contributions.
The resulting income tax that is generated by those payments to you will have to be paid by you in the country of your residence or the country where the payments are being transferred to.
We will be honored if you trust us with the safeguarding of your interests in front of the individual national Social Security Administrations. We work together with experts who are fluent in the languages of the respective countries and will be able to get you in touch with legal advisors or attorneys who will represent you in court if necessary.
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The respective Social Security Administrations of Austria and the USA have signed an agreement, which guarantees pension payouts to citizens residing in each partner-country ('Vertragsstaat'). This agreement stipulates that the partner-countries view each others' citizen as their own in regard to social security matters.
If you have paid social security contributions into the Austrian system you are entitled, through the stipulations of this agreement, to your pension abroad. In addition you may under certain circumstances receive credits for time periods even when no contributions have been paid during those times.
Make sure you secure these benefits as they are offered in this agreement. You can that way increase the yields of your contributions.
Please talk to us. We are specialized in securing your entitlements while you live abroad.
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In general, if you fulfill all requirements, you are allowed to receive your pension from Austria simultaneously with any Social Security payouts from the USA.
All you have to do is ask us to assist you with setting up your application and to guide you through the laborious and complex process until success is guaranteed.
Your need to apply for your US pension with the US Social Security Administration. Upon request our American partner can assist you there as well.
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Germany, all members of the EU, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland have among themselves signed social security agreements. These agreements provide certain equal rights to the citizens of those countries regarding the status of their pension insurances regardless in which countries the citizens reside and what their nationalities are.
In addition Germany has signed separate social security agreements with the following countries providing the citizens of those countries with certain benefits:
Australia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Chile, Israel, Japan, Canada, Croatia, Morocco, Macedonia, South Korea, Romania, Serbia & Montenegro, Tunisia, Turkey and the USA.
We will assist you in every way through our foreign offices. This goes for the citizens of the EU, EFTA, Switzerland, and all other aforementioned countries but also for anybody regardless of nationality who has ever worked in Germany.
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In general you can, provided you meet all requirements, receive pensions simultaneously from Austria, any member country of the EU, EFTA, from Switzerland or any country, with which Austria has signed a Social Security Agreement. There are, however, differences to observe, which may affect the amount of your pension.
By using our offices you can be assured that we will assist you from the time we file your application to the moment you receive your pension. We will help you in obtaining all benefits due to you to maximize the amount of your payouts.
There is extensive preparatory work necessary on your part; we will work with you to make it easy by assisting you in every step of the way.