Pensioners who receive complement to minimums to collect the minimum pension and decide rescue your pension plan They should know that they can lose it if the income is too high. The Supreme Court has established doctrine in this regard, making it clear that the total amount of the pension plan rescue is considered income from work and not only the profit or capital gain. This means that this extra income can cause the income limits to be exceeded and, therefore, the right to the supplement is lost in that year (since it is not fixed and is reviewed annually).
On this issue, it must always be said that there is some confusion, since some courts understood that only the profit obtained should be counted and not all of the capital rescued. But, the Supreme Court ruling explains that after the pension reform, under Law 27/2011 (which is the one that establishes the retirement age and the pension calculation method), it was toughened and referred to the Personal Income Tax Law (available in this BOE), which considers the total rescue as a work performance that must be computed at 100%.
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Marie-José (64 years old), retired with a pension of 1,800 euros per month: “I don’t want to earn more than 1,000 euros because I don’t work for the Government”
Eusebio, 75 years old, retired truck driver: “After 40 years of contributions, 1,300 euros of pension I think is not enough. I paid the mortgage 7 years ago and even then I don’t get everything”
If we look at the applicable regulations we see that the key is the date on which the pension plan money is rescued. The Supreme Court points out that for events that occurred after January 1, 2013, the old interpretation is no longer valid, that is, that the modified General Social Security Law requires that for the minimum supplement, the income must be looked at as defined by the tax legislation.
In this way, it is established that the redemption of the pension plan must be fully computed in the annual year in which it is collected. It must be understood that it is not about seeing how much money has been earned with the plan, but rather about how much money has entered the pensioner’s account that year, which usually increases income greatly and makes the collection of the assistance supplement incompatible.
A retiree must return 2,779.14 euros to rescue the plan
The case that gave rise to this ruling (which unifies the doctrine in the face of contradictory rulings) is that of a pensioner who in 2018 received a minimum supplement of 2,779.14 euros. That same year, he rescued a pension plan for a total value of 14,327.02 euros.
First, Social Security demanded the return of the supplement when it detected that with the rescue of the plan he exceeded the income limit. The pensioner, not being satisfied, appealed and the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia initially agreed with her by applying an old doctrine that only counted capital gains.
Now, the Supreme Court has definitively corrected this criterion and in its ruling (STS 876/2025) explains that since the rescue occurred in 2018, the stricter standard must be applied than before the pension reform (27/2011). Therefore, it determines that those 14,000 euros count as full income and forces the pensioner to return what was unduly charged for the minimum supplement.