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The minimum supplement is an aid that is added to the pension so that it reaches the minimum pension according to your family situation. Now, as it is an amount intended so that pensioners with low incomes do not remain in a vulnerable situation, Social Security requires that they not exceed a certain income. Overcoming it and not notifying it may result in Social Security not asking to return those improperly collected income. This is what has happened to a retiree who will have to return 14,241.39 euros for rescuing a pension plan and exceeding the allowed limit, this being endorsed by the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla-La Mancha.
As the ruling explains, everything begins in 2012, when his retirement pension is recognized. As he only had 19 years of contributions, his resulting pension was 440.49 euros per month (the amount of the pension depends on the total years of contributions and the regulatory base). For this reason and since he did not have more income, the Social Security (INSS) applied what is known as the “minimum supplement.”
Retirees who receive 3,003.94 euros per month as a Social Security pension
Social Security adds one and a half days of contributions for each day worked to the discontinued employees to calculate their retirement pension, but with the limit of one calendar year.
The problem began in 2013. In that year, the retiree proceeded to redeem the pension plan for an amount of 21,968.81 euros in 5 annual installments payable in the months of March.” That is, between 2013 and 2018, the retiree received almost 22,000 extra euros per year.
Rescuing the pension plan is not the problem, but its income is collected. By cross-checking data with the Tax Agency, Social Security detected that the pensioner tripled the legal income limit allowed to continue being a beneficiary of public aid. For this reason, it opened successive files indicating that the citizen had improperly received a total of 14,241.39 euros.
In order not to suffocate him, Social Security split up the debt, which oscillated between 78 and 87 euros per month over the years until it was completely repaid.
As time went by, Social Security certified the “cancellation of debt” as the discounts month by month covered the years claimed. Now, in September 2022, the pensioner filed a claim against Social Security. He argued that the Administration had gone too far in applying deductions and demanded that 7,567.97 euros be returned to him. In addition, he requested that his pension be updated again, adding the minimum supplement again (without cuts) from 2018 onwards.
After a first refusal from the Social Court number 2 of Ciudad Real, the pensioner took the case to the Castilian-La Mancha Superior Court of Justice. In his appeal, his defense argued that there was no formal resolution proving that the minimum supplement from 2018 onwards had been eliminated.
The incompatibility is insurmountable
The TSJ completely dismisses the retiree’s appeal, supporting the tight control of the INSS. The magistrates recall that the Administration itself had already responded to the citizen’s claims by warning him that “the minimum supplements will be incompatible with the pensioner’s perception of income from work, capital from economic activities and capital gains, when they reach an annual amount of 7,098.43 euros.” The ruling also emphasizes that the payments from the mutual plan “are considered work for tax purposes.”
The court debunks the argument of the alleged “helplessness” or lack of information, pointing out that there is a document from November 2018 where the INSS explicitly informed him that “the minimum supplement was eliminated from his pension, leaving it with a monthly amount of 465.69 euros and that suppression has been maintained in the following years.”
The court ends by explaining that, since this aid was justified in 2018 for exceeding income limits, the “gross” calculations that the retiree claimed as unpaid were incorrect. In this way, the TSJ confirms that there was no excessive discount by Social Security, validating that the system acts to recover public money when a pensioner exceeds the economic limits established by law.
Curiously, the ruling itself details that the citizen again recovered this “minimum supplement” in March 2024, at which time his income once again fell below the legal threshold, demonstrating that the system strictly adjusts to the annual economic reality of the beneficiary.