Full or capped combination

Two pensioners taking the same job at 2 000 € gross a month do not end up with the same income. One keeps everything; the other sees the pension cut as soon as the total exceeds 2 916,85 € gross a month. What separates them is a condition met, or not, on the day of departure.

Two regimes, one single opening question

Taking up work again after claiming a pension is allowed. What varies is the fate of the pension: paid in full, or cut by the amount exceeding a ceiling. The regime is settled at the date the activity resumes, not month by month afterwards.

The first condition is often where files fail: one pension forgotten in a foreign scheme, or one supplementary fund left unclaimed, is enough to move the file into the capped regime, even where the career gave a clear right to the full rate.

The second condition can be met in two ways: obtaining the full rate between 62 and 67 by justifying the number of quarters required for the birth year, or obtaining it at 67 or later, whatever the number of quarters held.

The ceiling of the capped regime, and its computation

Where those conditions are not met, the pension is still paid, but the sum of basic and supplementary pensions and of the income from work must not exceed a ceiling. Two values are possible, and the more favourable one applies.

• 160 % of the minimum wage on 1 January of the year, computed on 1 820 annual hours, that is 2 916,85 € gross per month
• Or the last monthly gross salary from work before admission to retirement
• The last salary retained is the monthly average of salaries subject to CSG over the last three months of activity
• A former part-timer may ask for that last salary to be reconstructed on a full-time basis

The income from work does not count for its gross amount: it is retained up to 98,25 % of it, the share subject to the general social contribution. Pensions, by contrast, are taken at their gross amount, with no allowance of any kind.

The declaration to the fund is due within the month following the resumption, under both regimes. It carries the name and address of the employer and the start date, completed by a sworn statement under the full combination, or by the last three payslips under the capped one.

What exceeding the ceiling produces

Where the ceiling is exceeded, each basic pension is reduced by the amount of the excess. If the reduction is larger than the basic pension itself, that pension stops being paid, and the difference is not carried over anywhere else.

The effective date of the reduction depends on the declaration deadline being met. Declared within the month following the resumption, the reduction runs from the first day of the month after notification. Declared late, it runs from the month of the excess itself.

The reduction is not permanent: it stops from the month in which the sum of income and pensions falls back below the ceiling. Any change of income must be reported, the new amount applying from the first day of the month of that change.

Special schemes — the Paris Opera, the seafarers' old-age scheme, the mining pension, non-agricultural employees — apply their own provisions. Falling under one of them means asking the fund before resuming any work, failing which the computation set out here does not hold.