Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia endorses the Social Security decision by which a retiree must return 14,457.39 euros of his retirement pension, since he collected it at the same time he was working. The court understands that these are improper charges, since the pension was made compatible with self-employed activity without having first requested active retirement, as required by law.
According to the ruling, this pensioner requested active retirement in 2016, so he began to collect 50% of his pension while working on his own as a freelancer. Then later, it communicated the cessation of activity, so it recovered 100% of the regulatory base since June 2017. But later it came later, when it registered again without communicating it in different periods between 2018 and 2019, specifically from March 1 to May 31, 2018, from September 1 to December 9, 2018 and from February 1 to May 31, 2019.
For this reason, Social Security opened a pension review file and declared those periods incompatible, understanding that the retiree had returned to work without having submitted the corresponding application. The amount to be returned for improper collection was 14,901.87 euros, although after compensating a settlement in his favor the final debt remained at 14,457.39 euros.
The pensioner defended that Social Security knew about his ups and downs and that he had communicated part of those movements, but he was unable to get them to agree with him either in the first instance or later in his plea.
The pension was not compatible just for communicating the discharge or the start of activity
After several procedures, the dispute reached the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia, which ruled in favor of Social Security. Justice explains that it is not enough to communicate the beginning or end of the activity, but that it is necessary to expressly request active retirement before starting to work, something that this retiree did not do. The ruling itself summarizes one of the litigated periods clearly by stating that “the incompatibility is declared from March 1, 2018 to May 31, 2018 because there is communication of the beginning and end of the activity, but not the request to make it compatible.”
Furthermore, in other sections the situation was even more unfavorable for the pensioner. The Court notes that the incompatibility was declared between September 1 and December 9, 2018 because “the beginning was not even communicated,” and between February 1 and May 31, 2019 because the beginning of the activity had not been communicated either, although the subsequent cessation was.
It was not enough to notify Social Security, you had to first apply for active retirement
The key to the ruling is that the retiree understood that it was enough to notify Social Security of the registration in the RETA or the beginning of the activity. However, the court remembers that the regulations require something more. Specifically, the Court explains that “the communication must be prior to the start of work and to the managing entity” and adds that “it must also be indicated that compatibility is requested for the purposes of active retirement.”
To understand it, it means that it was not enough for Social Security to know in some way that the pensioner was working. What must be taken into account is that it will formally request this specific compatibility in advance, so that the INSS could verify whether it met all the requirements required by law. By not doing so, the court concludes that the collection of the pension during those months was improper and confirms the obligation to return the 14,457.39 euros claimed by Social Security.