Until 2017, an employee was compulsorily insured in Luxembourg and accrued pension rights there. Since then, he has been compulsorily insured in the Netherlands, but he has voluntarily continued his membership of the Luxembourg pension scheme. He wishes to claim the contributions he pays himself as a deduction for negative earnings or as an annuity premium. The Court of Appeal rejected both claims. The voluntary continuation is a private matter with no sufficient link to his employment.<\/p>\n
The employee is a Dutch national and lives in the Netherlands. He has been working for an international group for many years, with a Dutch company and then a Luxembourg company acting as his employer in turn. Until 1 September 2017, he is compulsorily insured under the social security system in Luxembourg. In this context, he is accruing pension rights with the Luxembourg pension fund CNAP. The employer pays half of the contributions, whilst the other half is deducted from the employee\u2019s salary. As of 1 September 2017, the obligation to be insured shifts to the Netherlands and compulsory membership of CNAP ends.<\/p>\n
The employer informs the employee that he may voluntarily continue to accrue pension rights in Luxembourg. The employer is prepared to reimburse half of the contribution, up to a maximum of eight per cent of gross salary. The employee takes advantage of this option. He enters into an agreement with the Luxembourg pension authority himself and pays the contribution from his personal bank account. The employer reimburses its share via his salary, designated as a 'pension contribution'. This reimbursement is taxed as salary. In 2020, the employee pays a total of nearly \u20ac15,000 and receives just over \u20ac7,000 net from his employer. He wishes to claim the difference as a tax deduction.<\/p>\n
The employee claims the personal contribution as negative pay. The Court of Appeal rejects this. The employee took out the insurance with CCSS privately. The employer describes it as an 'exclusive agreement between the employee and the Luxembourg pension institution'. Unlike previously with the CNAP, the employer is not a party to this agreement. Consequently, the premium paid by the employee is not sufficiently linked to his employment to be classified as negative pay. The fact that the scheme is an extension of the former compulsory insurance does not alter this.<\/p>\n
The employee then argues that the premium is deductible as an expenditure for income provision. That argument also fails. The burden of proof rests with the employee to demonstrate that the payments qualify as annuity premiums and serve to compensate for a pension shortfall. He has not met that burden of proof. The argument that this constitutes a breach of the European prohibition on discrimination, because some foreign insurers are authorised to operate here, need not be considered. After all, it must first be established that the payments constitute an annuity premium, and this has not been demonstrated.<\/p>\n
An employee was compulsorily insured in Luxembourg until 2017 and accrued pension rights there. After that,<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}