How Does Kokumin Nenkin Work?

Hi everyone,

I recently received a big fat piece of mail labeled Kokumin Nenkin. There is fairly large amount that's written down. Do I have to pay this? I thought a chunk of my salary automatically goes towards this?

If I do have to pay it, can I claim it back when I leave Japan?

Any help appreciated!

You must if you are self-employed, or a part-time worker.
Your employer must pay if you work fulltime for a company.

I never paid any of it after I went self employed Also just to make you aware if you leave Japan you can only get 480 mnths worth of your Kosei Nenkin back and I think (investigating at the moment) Kokumin nenkin Is void if you miss one payment DONT quote me on this yet as I said im investigating this to date

- First of all, are you currently employed full time? If yes, check with your employer to see if you SHOULD HAVE been covered by the company's scheme.

- If you are self-employed, yes, you have to pay it, unless you are currently completely "unemployed" currently/earning only a very low income that you would be eligible for exemption (you have to go to the city/ward office to declare the status of low income though).

- If you pay into this scheme anyway, you cannot claim it back UNLESS your country's government has a reciprocal agreement with Japan (so that your years of contribution into the Japanese scheme counts towards your country's scheme too). Under this national scheme, your current contribution is supposed to help the whole scheme, meaning, contribute to the pension benefits of the seniors currently; you are not paying into your OWN benefits.

And you can only get a partial refund of up to 36 months, not 480 months if you leave Japan!

Thank you everyone for your answers. Apologies that I haven't responded sooner, I only just started getting notifications yesterday, for some odd reason.

The period I'm being charged for is when I was unemployed/earning very little.

I asked a workmate and he says that his wife (who is/was being charged for the period when she wasn't working) ignores the notices.

Can you get fined for ignoring them?

Thanks again. If anyone has any new information, please post!

- Then I assume that you used to be employed by a company, then were not employed for a while, then you got employed again (now you do have an employer), but you are getting charged for the period in between? Check the months for which you are getting charged. It's possible that the previous employer reported that you left their scheme, but the current employer has not reported that you are enrolled in their scheme now.

- Are you getting charged for a past fiscal year (as against this fiscal year, meaning, from April 2007 to March 2008)? I believe they do not
accept any application for exemption due to no/low income after that year has ended.

- You don't get fined (I believe and I hope); it's just that later, if you stay in Japan long enough to start receiving pension benefits, that time
when you did not pay in would count against you, meaning, you could end up not receiving any pension/receiving less. I do not know how it works when it comes to claiming it upon leaving Japan.

- But I also know that the Social Insurance Agency is (particularly recently) doing whatever it can to collect as much as they can... so if you intend to stay in Japan long-term, paying up might be part of being a good citizen...

I recently went freelance after being in the Shakai Hoken/Nenkin program with my previous employer - as a freelancer I'm now in the Kokumin Hoken/Nenkin program.

I've been dispatched for work as a contract worker, at which time I was also on Kokumin Hoken and didn't pay into Nenkin. This time around, when I signed up for the insurance I got a notice in the mail about nenkin as well so I went into city hall to ask about it.

They told me that entering Nenkin is mandatory for all residents in Japan, but there are no penalties for not paying and in fact a bunch of younger people refuse to pay. They will try to call/bug you about it though, so I guess that would put it about on par with the NHK guy.

And yes, you can apply to get a refund for Nenkin if you leave the country, but you will only get a refund for 3 years worth. If you work here and pay into Nenkin for more than 36 months, my understanding is that you only get refunded for the 3 highest paying years which you paid in. Unfortunately, the guy at city hall didn't know too much about the details on that part as it's not exactly the kind of stuff they deal with too much.

They now have a program in which Nenkin communicates with US Social Security and other like programs, so theoretically you can have them send your Nenkin portion to US SS, but I haven't found details on that yet.

Hope that helps someone.