Reimbursement of Contributions by a Non-Insured Person

Facts

The Austrian national Anton Hochberger, born in 1904, definitively settled in Switzerland in 1961. From 1956 to 1961, he was not employed in Switzerland. The Compensation Fund had retroactively subjected him to the Swiss Old Age and Survivors' Insurance (AHV) from 1956 onwards, and he had regularly paid the contributions. However, when determining the old-age pension in 1969, the Fund only considered the contributions paid from October 1961 onwards as contributing to the pension, as it assumed that Hochberger had only been resident and subject to AHV in Switzerland from that time.

Hochberger filed a complaint against these rulings and requested that the contributions paid from 1956 to September 1961 also be taken into account in the pension calculation. The Federal Insurance Court now had to clarify whether the Compensation Fund was entitled to declare the contributions from the period before October 1961 as non-contributory to the pension.

Considerations

The Court stated that Article 16, paragraph 3 of the Federal Law on Old Age and Survivors' Insurance (AHVG) represents an exceptional provision that must not be interpreted extensively. This norm is not applicable to contribution payments by non-insured persons.

While by analogy to Article 16, paragraph 3 AHVG, a five-year limitation period for the reimbursement claim could also be assumed for non-insured persons, this would have the consequence that the administration could declare the contributions as non-contributory to the pension for up to ten years after payment, but the affected person would no longer have a reimbursement claim after five years. The Court considered this legal consequence unacceptable.

Instead,…