Correct. I might have missed it, but did you indicate your canton?
Here you can find information from the canton of Aargau about how they calculate it, including an online calculator. One comment: if your spouse pays enough AHV, you don’t have to pay.
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You can order your “Auszug aus dem individuellen Konto” from AHV, where you see your past years’ contributions. I see reached ceiling there (they calculate fictitious income from contributions).
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I isn’t obvious but e.g. if you work 10 years at 180K before FIRE, then 10 years of contributions even counted at 0 you still get the max pension. In this way the contributions post FIRE for people that emigrated to CH are probably quite useful because we have less accumulated years but likely a higher salary (even based purely on moving to CH mid-career).
I did some very rough calculations in Vaud and it would appear in 10 years of AHV contributions would increase the pension by more than the cost. E.g., something like 6K CHF per year contributions but the pension increases by 7K so it is actually a very good deal.
This works because the Pillar 1 rewards long contribution periods more than high salaries. Earning 300K per year for 10 years is less effective than 90K for 30 years.
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Yes, there’s a double-cap on pensions:
Cap 1: Years contributed. You pro-rate if less than 44 years
Cap 2: Salary. After a salary cap, contributions no longer matter. So someone paying average of 200k for 44 years gets the same as someone paying average of 2000k for 44 years.
The good thing is that salary is averaged over the contribution years. However, they are not averaged over non-contribution years so those years are lost.
So someone who paid 100000K into AHV in one year will get less than someone who paid 200K into AHV over 2 years.
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Got money and family. Could have been worse.
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AHV is a massive tax drag, it really sucks.
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I’m afraid you have to pay contributions until 65, even if you ask for payment of AHV rent at 63…
You even have to pay AHV on your AHV income! 
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Yes correct. Once you receive AHV at age 63, your AHV contributions will increase (20 x yearly retirement income on top). It’s almost a state scam 
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In order to get more confused I asked copilot about AHV.
This is the weird part :
A key point that is often misunderstood
The AHV pension depends on two factors:
- Length of contribution period (maximum 44 years)
- Revalued average annual income (average of lifetime earnings)
It does NOT depend on contributions paid whilst not in employment.
Paying CHF 500 or CHF 5,000 whilst not in employment does not affect the pension.
my part:
So if you have a salary of 80k chf at 25 and you stop working, you pay for 40 years AHV and go to pension like someone who worked for the whole life at that salary.
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Well it does. Paying NE-Beiträge counts as years contributed (Skala44) but not towards your average salary.
So lets assume someone was working from 30-50 in Switzerland and had a total salary of 3 million. He/She proceeds to pay the required minimum till 65 and gets AHV then. It will be the value on the table with 86k avg. salary (I think, or is it 3M / 44?) x 35/44.
ehm. it said:
Yes, I’ll give you the official reference – but first I need to clarify something important:
your interpretation (that years without income lower the average) is correct.
My previous answer was wrong.
Thank you for your patience: I’ll now explain exactly how the AVS works, using the official links.
I’ve asked for a link and it chickened out.
So in my dumb example above, 18-25 are 7 years = 56000 chf that needs to be divided by 44. The rest that you pay is not a salary so it’s not counted. Even worse than what I expected. OR chatgpt is again wrong.
Also it gave me the wrong link.
Isn’t something easy to ask or where the answer should be obvious? We’re asking about “ok I’m fired, I pay ahv every year, do I get a pension counting this unemployed years when I made mandatory contribution to the system? If yes, how much? If no, isn’t that illegal to contribute to a system, and then not be a beneficiary?”
This question when posed to chatgpt directly get a good answer:
If I work from 18yo to 25yo, so 7 years, in Switzerland, and the salary is 80000chf/year, I pay the AHV on it.. After that I stop working, I must pay minimal contributions to AHV anyway until 65yars of age. What happens to my pension? It will not stay the same as if I work the whole life at a 80000chf/year salary?
IF asked to copilot you get rubbish.
Total salary / 44 should be your average salary, doesn‘t matter how many years you worked? And then years/44 on the table?
I’ve searched extensively on the internet for an answer to that question (do AHV/AVS contribution while not working and not getting unemployment benefits count toward the average income for the purpose of AHV pension calculations) and haven’t come with a definitive answer. I doubt chatbots can pull one out of their hat that would be more authoritative than any of our interpretations here.
We need someone with actual experience or several people who have asked an AHV/AVS office directly.
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The truth is that it gets calculated correctly. on my dumb example of 35+ year of inactivity, if you have 6-8 millions you get the full pension because that millions get taxed like a 80k++ salary
edit: wrong. probably. see below.
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total salary + contributions when unemployed, otherwise you sounds like copilot
but maybe i’m wrong. yes.
edit 2: I am wrong or chatgpt is wrong
But contributions ≠ pension credits
Here’s the key misunderstanding:
AHV pension is NOT based on how much you paid in
It’s based on your recorded income (Erwerbseinkommen)
For non-working people:
- The system assigns a fictitious income based on wealth
- This imputed income is much lower than what large contributions might suggest
edit3: It makes sense, we contribute for the common good and we don’t want that uber rich people just don’t work and use their wealth to just get a pension. so the non-worker contributions are counted less.
Honestly I don‘t know more than before.
Someone working from 20-50 has 30 years of salary contributions (lets assume CHF 3 million in total). He retires early at 50 with a taxable wealth of 1.5 million and pays the required amount for the next 15 years. How much AHV at 65?
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