We all know that years of work count towards retirement. But what about if you spent part of your productive years on parental leave, long-term disability, or attending college? Do these years count towards your pension? Find the answer in this article.
You are entitled to an old-age pension when you reach retirement age and have completed a minimum period of pensionable service. The retirement age is uniformly set at 65 for persons born after 1971. For older age groups, the retirement age depends on the exact year of birth, the sex of the child and, for women, the number of children brought up. In this case, it ranges from 53 to 65.
The second condition that we will look at in detail is meeting the minimum pensionable age. This is the statutory length of participation in pension insurance that an insured person must have in order to be entitled to an old-age pension. This period includes the periods during which the insured person has paid contributions to the pension insurance (the so-called contribution period) and also the so-called replacement periods. Let’s take a closer look at what exactly counts as contributory and compensatory periods.
The pension calculator available on the website of the Czech Social Security Administration will tell you when you are entitled to a pension.
The minimum pension payment period, or pensionable service, counts both the contributory time you have spent at work and the ‘compensatory time’.
Contributory periods include periods during which you have paid pension contributions or had contributions paid on your behalf by another person (for example, your employer). This period is essential for entitlement to and the amount of your retirement pension, as it affects both the total length of insurance and the calculation of the average personal assessment base (the income on which contributions were paid). Contributory insurance periods refer in particular to:
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Compensatory time includes periods during which you have not paid contributions but which still count towards your pensionable service. You will get this in the statutory situations and provided you have completed at least one year of contributory insurance (even intermittently). It can be included in full or reduced to 80% (this means that if you have 100 days of compensatory time, only 80 days will count towards your pension insurance).
We include in particular:
Are you out of work and don’t know what to do next? When do you have to register with the Job Centre and how does it work? Will you get support at all, and how long can you get it? All these questions can be answered in our article.
There are a lot of questions around contribution and replacement periods and what counts towards your pension and what doesn’t. Let’s answer the most common ones:
Pension contributions are paid on your behalf if you are registered at the Job Centre. This time is fully counted if you receive unemployment benefits or retraining and if you receive severance pay, redundancy pay or redundancy payments.
The insurance is also paid for you if you are not receiving benefits, but is reduced to 80%. This is limited to a maximum of three years or one year if it was earned before age 55.
However, if you were not registered with the unemployment office when you were unemployed, this time will not count towards your pension. This could mean that your final pension will be significantly reduced or you may not get a pension at all.
When are you entitled to unemployment benefits? Find out in the next article.
If you are on sick leave (temporary disability), this time is counted in full. It works a little differently if you are on sick leave after you stop working. In this case, 80% of this time will count towards your pension, provided you paid sickness insurance while you were working.
Specifically, this includes situations where you have been ill and your doctor has recognised your temporary incapacity for work. In addition, if you have been ordered to be quarantined or have received any of the other sickness insurance benefits (e.g. nursing allowance).
Both maternity and parental leave count towards your pension. In particular, the time spent caring for a child up to the age of 4 counts in full, regardless of whether you are male or female, receive parental allowance or are registered with the employment office. However, this applies only to one person per child at any one time.
Expecting a baby and not sure if you are entitled to maternity pay? What about the need to be employed and what are you entitled to as a self-employed person? What if you left your job three months before the birth? We cover all this in our next article.
Whether your studies count towards your pension depends on when you studied and how old you were at the time:
Contract work only counts towards your pension if you have reached a certain earnings on which you have paid pension contributions. This threshold is specifically set at a minimum of 4,000 crowns for an employment agreement and 10,500 crowns for a performance agreement (if you have only signed one) or 17,500 crowns (in total if you have signed more than one).
You are entitled to an old-age pension when you reach retirement age and have completed the minimum period of pension insurance. The minimum period of pension insurance includes contributory periods (periods of paying insurance premiums) and compensatory periods, which are counted, for example, for childcare, military service, study or receiving sickness benefits.
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