bryanc wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:55 am
thanks..but isnt there kosei nenkin kikin?
You are not paying kosei nenkin kikin likely because your company doesn't offer a kosei nenkin kikin plan, meaning that you are not eligible to contribute to one to begin with. As with other pension matters things soon get complicated, but kosei nenkin kikin was initially classified as a type of company pension plan (i.e., a third-tier pension) under which a company, by assuming responsibility for managing and administering the lion's share of the regular kosei nenkin pension, could make it possible for its employees to receive additional DB pension benefits (i.e., the employee pays more to the company, which in place of the government invests the extra amount on top of the usual pension amount, potentially yielding higher returns and a higher pension for the employee). In other words, it's a government-corporate hybrid.
After the bursting of the bubble, companies that were offering kosei nenkin kikin pensions started shifting to independent DB pensions when that became legally possible in 2002 (the year meantioned by RetireJapan), thereby relieving themselves of the obligation to make good on their assigned portion of normal government pension benefits. Kosei nenkin kikin plans could no longer be set up at all after 2014, although previously existing ones remain in effect unless the company has taken steps to dissolve theirs or replace it with a company DB plan, as the government encourages them to do (companies themselves, of course, are shifting instead to DC pension plans -- when they offer pensions at all). For practical purposes, the amount of extra money you can contribute toward a kosei nenkin kikin pension is limited to what your company's plan says is possible. It sounds as though yours is a regular (=two-tier) national pension.
