Already before you return home, it is important to find out what to do with your pension scheme. In most cases, your tax status will change from your first working day in Denmark. When you return home, your options depend on what you chose when you left Denmark:

Your pension scheme was not changed
Your scheme will now continue without any changes.
Your pension scheme was changed into a paid-up scheme and we established a non-deductible pension scheme
Now, you will have a tax-deductible pension scheme through your employer again, including the same insurance cover as you have had so far.

We recommend that you agree with your employer to surrender the pension scheme to which you made contributions while you were on secondment.

At the same time, you make additional contributions to your pension scheme, meaning that over an agreed period, you will pay an amount after tax that corresponds to the amount you have received. The agreed period can be no more than 24 months.

You have to pay a surrender fee, but you do not have to pay monthly administrative costs and be taxed as capital income on interest and return on the non-deductable pension scheme via your annual tax statement.

It is a condition for the surrender of the pension scheme that you send a copy of valid photo ID (passport or driving licence) and that you fill in and send a Know your customer form.

The reason is that Velliv is required to help prevent international crime and money laundering.

Seconded again?

If you plan to go on secondment again, you have to consider whether you have sufficient time to contribute the surrender value before you go abroad again.

If the additional contributions to your pension scheme are more than 20 per cent of your salary, you may be subject to additional taxation if your Danish tax liability ceases within 5 years (of the increase). Therefore, it might be a good idea to check this with Skattestyrelsen before you go abroad again.

What do you need to consider?