The pension account

Yearly credit, total credit, divided by 14

For each calendar year a Teilgutschrift— a yearly credit — is worked out: that year’s contribution bases multiplied by the Kontoprozentsatz of 1,78 % (§ 12 Abs. 2 APG). The Gesamtgutschrift, the total credit, is the uprated sum of every yearly credit so far. Under § 5 Abs. 1 the monthly gross pension is that total divided by 14.

The 14 is not a presentational choice: Austria pays 14 times a year, so an annual figure is not twelve times the monthly one. We state no annual figure anywhere.

The contribution ceiling

A yearly credit counts contribution bases only up to the annual maximum. For 2026 the daily maximum is 231,00 €, and § 12 Abs. 1 sets the annual one at 420 times that — 97.020,00 €. The 420 is a statutory multiplier rather than a number of days: it reflects that Austrian contribution bases include the two special payments.

Uprating: two numbers that get conflated

The Aufwertungszahl uprates the account balance; for 2026 it is 1,073. Mind which year it belongs to: § 12 Abs. 3 Z 2 multiplies the previous year’s total credit by the Aufwertungszahl of the year following the year being computed, not of that year.

The Aufwertungsfaktoren of § 108 Abs. 4 ASVG do a different job: they revalue past contribution bases for the assessment basis — that is, for the ASVG side of the Parallelrechnung, not for the pension account.

Drawing later, and the annual uprating

Working past the ordinary pension age of 65 years earns an uplift under § 5 Abs. 4 of 0,425 % a month, capped at 15,3 %. Both figures are the statute’s own.

Pensions already in payment are multiplied by the Anpassungsfaktor with effect from 1 January. For 2026 it was set at 1,027, an increase of 2,7 %. We do not state how a future year’s factor will be arrived at: it is fixed “having regard to the Richtwert” under § 108f ASVG, we did not retrieve that provision in full, and the legislature has repeatedly set the annual uprating directly by statute instead.

No minimum pension, and no maximum

The act guarantees no minimum old-age pension. The Ausgleichszulage (§§ 292–293 ASVG) is a separate payment that tops a pension up to a Richtsatz, is means-tested against total income including a spouse’s, and is not payable at all alongside a partial pension. It is therefore not a floor under this pension, and we do not state its rates here; they are in BGBl. II Nr. 263/2025 Art. 1 § 2.

Nor is there a statutory maximum. What is capped is the contribution base, not the benefit — the widely quoted “maximum pension” figures are a consequence of that cap rather than an enacted ceiling.

The pension is taxable income and wage tax is withheld from it. We state no rate, no bracket and no allowance, because we did not retrieve the income tax act for these pages. The figure § 5 Abs. 1 produces is a gross figure.

Why no amount comes out of this

Everything above describes the pension account — and the pension account on its own describes only a working life begun after 1 January 2005. For everyone born after 1954 holding at least one insurance month up to the end of 2004, § 16 Abs. 3 imposes the Parallelrechnung: the old ASVG provisions are applied alongside and whichever is more favourable governs. That is a second complete benefit formula, and we have not modelled it. A number produced by dividing a total credit by 14 would therefore not be the pension of most people reading this page.