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Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:42:49 -0600
Bruno,
with the caveat that I am no expert on this issue, when I looked into the
matter way back when, I came away with the following information:
(i) if you contribute to AHV/AVS for one portion of your life and to the US
SS for another, then you'll collect benefits form both systems after
retirement (some minimum years may apply). This means you cannot "add the
years together" and collect only from one system, but rather you need to
claim benefits from both systems separately.
(ii) each full (calendar) year you fail to make contributions to the Swiss
AHV/AVS constitutes a gap and as such reduces your benefit by 2.4% (=1/42,
which implicitly assumes that a work-life is 42 years long, though many are
longer).
(iii) To my knowledge the years prior to the gap don't expire.
(iv) you can choose to contribute to the AHV/AVS while abroad, AKA voluntary
AHV/AVS. Call the headquarters in Geneva for where to pay.
However, there is no "minimum contribution" (except for students in CH
earning less than a minimum amount; they can "top it off" to have their
years in school count). You'll be paying based on your income. Since your
US employer will not be matching your contributions, you'll be paying
somewhere in the order of 17% of your *gross* US salary to the AHV/AVS. To
make matters worse, as far as I know there is no cap on the income that's
subject to this contribution rate, even though benefits are capped. (You
could try to lie about your salary, but good luck with that. ;-)
(v) It is a reasonable expectation that AHV/AVS (as well as SS) benefits
will be reduced significantly over the next decades.
Depending on your age this means that your return on the voluntary AHV/AVS
contributions could be very poor indeed. I.e, if you're 60+ of age, you
might consider such a voluntary contribution since it increases your annual
benefit by 2.4% in the very near future. If your younger, it's doubtful
that it would be worth it. You're likely better off just incurring the gap
and the concomitant reduction in benefits. With some luck your US-SS
benefits will make up for it.
[The situation used to be much different some decades ago in that the
voluntary AHV/AVS was a great bargain for Swiss abroad. No longer, alas!]
Hope that helps. Others may have more accurate or updated information than
I.
Cheers,
-Sven
Received on Thu Dec 29 2005 - 12:14:16 PST
