Supplementary pensions: the Wijninckx contribution will increase from 3% to 6% in 2028

If someone builds up a total pension that exceeds the maximum civil servant pension (currently 93.760,79 euro gross per year or 7.813,40 euro gross per month), an additional contribution to social security is mandatory. This contribution is known as the Wijninckx contribution, named after the politician who was the founder of this scheme.

To determine whether someone exceeds this limit, all pensions from the first and second pillar are added together. This includes the statutory pension (first pillar) and group insurance for employees and VAPZ (the free supplementary pension for the self-employed), RIZIV (the national health and disability insurance institute) contracts, IPT (an individual pension commitment funded by your company), and POZ (the pension agreement for the self-employed without a company) for the self-employed (second pillar). These totals are then converted into a monthly annuity amount and compared with the Wijninckx limit.

If the calculated amount is below this limit, no additional contribution is required.

If it is higher, then it is. The pension reserve level on 1 January of the current year is then compared with that of 1 January of the previous year. The pension reserves of the previous year are first increased by the average ten-year OLO rate over the last six calendar years. The difference, in other words the growth, is then additionally taxed.

At the moment, the contribution is calculated at a withholding of 3%, but from 2028 that percentage will be 6%. This change is part of a package of measures to control pension costs in our country.

If you have to pay a Wijninckx contribution, your company or your employer is notified of this via Sigedis, the service provider that manages MyPension. You therefore do not have to do anything yourself to check this.

The Wijninckx contribution, an additional social contribution, is fully borne by the company or the organizer.

Who has to pay a Wijninckx contribution?

In 2022, only 2.437 companies in Belgium had to pay a contribution. You already need to build up a fairly high additional final capital in order to qualify for this contribution. What 'fairly high' effectively means cannot be stated concretely, given that so many factors play a role in the calculation. But in practice, we often see final capitals that approach at least one million, and even more often a threshold that lies a lot higher.

Example of the concrete calculation.

A person is above the threshold. On 1 January 2022, this person had reserves worth 1 million euro in the supplementary pension. On 1 January 2023, that had grown to 1,05 million euro. The growth was therefore 50.000 euro. That amount is corrected for a notional return based on the ten-year government bonds over the past years. Suppose that return was 1 percent, or specifically 10.000 euro (1% x 1 million), then the net growth was 40.000 euro (50.000 - 10.000). The Wijninckx contribution for that year is then 3 percent x 40.000 euro = 1.200 euro. A doubling of the contribution to 6 percent in 2028 means the contribution then rises to 2.400 euro.

In an article by Life & Benefits from 09/2023, a calculated estimate is given of what reserves we are talking about before a Wijninckx contribution can come into play.

The reserve that a self-employed person must build up is 2.242.742 EUR, and as an employee it amounts to 1.609.874 EUR.