On the initiative of four organisations representing the interests of self-employed workers, the so-called ZZP Pension has been set up. It is a collective pension scheme for self-employed people, which is actually annuity should be mentioned. After all, the term ‘pension’ is reserved for the retirement provision that can be accrued by employees under their employment contract with tax relief. Self-employed persons must rely on the annuity scheme for tax relief. The deduction of premiums or contributions to an annuity product from income subject to income tax is possible insofar as those premiums or contributions remain within the tax allowance.
It is, of course, important for self-employed people to give careful thought to securing their income in the event of emergencies (such as incapacity for work and unemployment), as well as after their working life. The extent to which and the manner in which these risks are covered is up to each self-employed person to decide. The ZZP Pension is certainly not the only option available for this.
With a view to preserving the annuity capital of self-employed people, the Participation Act will be amended in the course of 2015. Under current regulations, before paying out social assistance, a local authority may, in principle, require the applicant to surrender their annuity products and use the surrender values to cover their living expenses. Only once these surrender values have been used up will the local authority proceed to pay social assistance.
The bill has yet to be tabled in the House of Representatives, but State Secretary Klijnsma has already outlined some of its key features in a letter. This indicates that the intention is to exempt up to €250,000 of retirement provisions accumulated by self-employed workers without employees (ZZP) in the form of annuity capital from the means test for social assistance. However, the self-employed person must have made at least some contributions to the annuity scheme during the five years prior to applying for social assistance. Furthermore, the protection applies up to a maximum annual contribution of €6,000 during the aforementioned five-year period.