The earnings limit for family insurance

adminonMarch 11, 2023April 6, 2023Leave a Comment

If dependents have low incomes and these are below the earnings limit for family insurance, there is the possibility of co-insuring the corresponding person free of charge. However, this only applies to members of a statutory health insurance, as the entitlement is based on paragraph 10 of the Fifth Social Security Code. To find out what the current income limits are and what happens if the family member's earnings are higher, see the guide below.

The most important facts in brief

The earnings limit for family insurance is usually increased annually.
From the surplus income of the co-insured person, the income-related expenses can still be deducted.
Members of a statutory health insurance may in principle both partners and children (biological, adopted, stepchildren and grandchildren) also insure.
If the family member exceeds the income limit, he or she must purchase his or her own health insurance policy.

Who can be included in the family insurance?

In principle, it is only possible to co-insure family members. The following groups of persons are considered as such in this context:

Physical children
Spouse or same-sex partner
Adopted children, as well as children who already live with the family that wants to adopt them
Stepchildren and grandchildren
Foster children who live in a domestic community with their foster parents

Children can be insured at least until they reach the age of 18. If they are not gainfully employed, they can be included in the family insurance until they reach the age of 23. Students must be at least one year old. If the offspring is in school or vocational training or is doing a voluntary social/ecological year or federal voluntary service, the child is covered even up to the age of 25. Co-insured for the second year of life. The same applies to students. If there is an interruption in schooling or vocational training due to the fulfillment of a statutory service obligation, the insurance remains in force thereafter, but only for a period corresponding to the duration of the service performed. For people with a disability, the age limit does not apply under certain conditions.

What are the earnings limits for family members?

The earnings limit for family insurance corresponds to one seventh of the monthly reference amount according to paragraph 18 of the Fourth Social Security Code. However, the legislator raises the amount almost every year, as a result of which the income limit also increases slightly. This is justified with the average remunerations of the legal pension insurance, at which the variable orients itself. While the earnings limit in 2020 was still 455 euros per month, it has been increased to 470 euros for 2021. Always inform yourself accordingly about the current earnings limit. This amount must not exceed the total monthly income of the co-insured person.

What counts as total income?

The term total income is defined by paragraph 16 of the Fourth Social Code. It states that the total income is the "sum of the income in the sense of the income tax law". According to paragraph 2 of the Income Tax Act, this includes above all:

Gross pay as well as one-time payments, such as vacation or Christmas bonuses
income from capital assets, for example interest income or dividends
Income from renting and leasing
Pensions (including pensions paid abroad)
Earnings from self-employment
Taxable alimony payments

However, income does not include, for example, BAfoG benefits, depreciation, lump sums for savers, parental, child and housing allowances and amounts for child-raising periods in the case of pensions.

How the statutory health insurance calculates the monthly income in detail depends on the type of income. In the case of wages, the months in which the person to be co-insured earned them are decisive. Regular payments, on the other hand, are calculated on a pro rata basis. If income from self-employment is available, the health insurance company uses the last income tax assessment to derive the future income.

Take into account income-related expenses

Employees may still deduct income-related expenses from their gross pay. You can at least pay the legally fixed flat rate of 1.000 Euro, which corresponds to an additional monthly amount of 83.33 Euro. If you can prove higher income-related expenses, the earnings limit for family insurance increases even further.

Earnings limit for family insurance exceeded: What to do?

If the family member included in the family insurance exceeds the income limit set by the legislator, there is an obligation to inform the health insurance company and to take out a separate insurance policy. Usually, the insurance company sends a questionnaire to families every year regarding income. This enables the insurance industry to check whether the necessary requirements are still met.

Nevertheless, it is advisable for insured persons to inform the health insurance fund as early as possible if they exceed the earnings limit for family insurance. If you do not declare the relevant changes, in the worst case scenario you can expect that the insurance company will demand an additional premium payment.

While driving, the clutch is our constant companion. The way to use them is extremely variant among drivers. Some try to have as short and precise hitching phases as possible, while others use the depressed pedal as a footrest. Used correctly, wear and tear can be minimized.

Although the clutch is used frequently in almost every driving style and almost every driving route and is a classic wearing part, it can theoretically last (almost) forever. Of course provided you avoid some treacherous mistakes. Especially vehicles that already have hundreds of thousands of miles on the tachometer clock and have been in use for years, not infrequently have an exceedingly spongy clutch. The grinding point can hardly be felt in such cases. Often such worn clutches can be found on older rental cars, which experience shows are not driven with excessive care and restraint. To ensure your own vehicle doesn't end up like this, be sure to keep the following principles in mind.

Disengage

Whenever possible, you should let go of the clutch. If the car is at a standstill, even if only for a few moments, it's a good idea not to pop the clutch and remain in a lukewarm position. Instead, you should take it out of gear and disengage it. By the way, modern cars with automatic start-stop systems use this fact automatically to switch off the engine temporarily and thus even save fuel. Many drivers make the mistake of waiting with the clutch depressed, especially at traffic lights during the red phase, in order to be able to start as quickly as possible as soon as the system changes to green. Unlike in some other countries, however, our traffic lights do not immediately jump from red to green. In the transition phase, they therefore have sufficient time to engage a gear again in peace and quiet and to prepare for the onward journey.

Pay attention to the grinding point

Learned in driving school and generously disregarded by many thereafter: The clutch pedal is not a toggle switch. In fact, each clutch has a so-called grinding point. If you let go of the clutch pedal suddenly, the vehicle stutters, makes a small leap forward and goes out. In the vernacular one stalled the vehicle. If one lets the clutch come however slowly, a light vibration goes out from a certain pressure point of the pedal. Here the aforementioned grinding point is reached, at which the energy of the engine is transferred to the drivetrain. If you let the clutch drag too long now, you risk consequential damage. If the flywheel grinds permanently on the clutch disc, both components heat up to such an extent that the typical clutch odor can be detected even inside the car. The wear and tear is exceptionally high on both windows at this moment. If, on the other hand, you keep the clutch permanently depressed, you stress the restoring bearing. Excessively used, this also shortens the lifetime of any clutch to a great extent.

The external influences

If you go on vacation with your vehicle fully loaded, the vehicle pulls an unusual amount of weight. Also the clutch behavior is influenced by this. At times, you may have to get used to the change in circumstances with a heavily loaded car. In addition to starting on level surfaces and on inclines, this also affects braking behavior and travel in particular. The same applies, of course, if you pull a cargo trailer or a caravan.

Conclusion

A well-maintained and correctly used clutch can theoretically survive the entire life cycle of a vehicle without repair or replacement. An experienced driver can feel and hear a badly worn clutch. A breakdown therefore announces itself at an early stage. To get the most out of your vehicle, you should clutch with feeling. Release the clutch quickly, but not jerkily, and never remain permanently on the clutch pedal. Ideally, your left foot should be resting on the designated rest and be ready to engage the clutch at any time.

By the way… you can find a garage that you can trust with your car with a good feeling, in our garage search

Do you have questions or are you looking for answers to topics, then send us your questions about driving a car! This email address is being protected from spambots! JavaScript must be enabled to view!

Events are unfolding at a rapid pace these days: hundreds of thousands of people have stopped paying the installments for apartments they once wanted to move into. In China, it is not uncommon to pay off a property while it is still being built. But due to the high indebtedness of several developers who financed their projects with cheap loans, it is currently questionable whether these apartments will ever be built. One of the largest developers of this kind, Evergrande, has been in crisis since last fall and is now insolvent.

In Henan province, hundreds of thousands of savers have been cheated out of their deposits: Four banks lured people from all over the People's Republic with high interest rates. In reality, the money was invested riskily. Now deposits worth the equivalent of six billion U.S. dollars have been lost – nothing has been paid out since April. For two weeks, savers have been demonstrating in front of bank buildings in Henan. Police cracked down violently because public protest is banned in China. It didn't help that protesters carried Chinese flags to show their patriotic sentiments. Because at the same time they chanted that the local government was responsible for the fraud.

People have traveled from far-flung parts of the country to demonstrate in front of the People's Bank in Zhengzhou

Has Beijing overstretched itself?

Now there is further bad news: More and more loans that Beijing has granted as part of its New Silk Road initiative can no longer be serviced. Since 2013, China has invested around $840 billion to build roads, ports, dams and power plants around the world. With this "project of the century," as China's ruler Xi Jinping has called it, Beijing is pursuing primarily political goals, not economic ones. Many loans were therefore also granted according to political criteria. A more than courageous program in view of the risks taken. The question now is whether Beijing has not made a mistake with this global initiative.

The Financial Times reports that more and more countries are asking Beijing to defer their loans because they can't pay them anymore. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, economies are set back years by the COVID malaise. This is probably another reason why loans worth around 52 billion will have to be renegotiated in 2020 and 2021, whereas in 2019 the figure is expected to be much lower at 16 billion US dollars. In total, according to a study by the New York-based research institute Rhodium, 118 billion, or 16 percent of the total volume of all loans, is currently on the line.

In order to plug the credit holes of its debtors, the People's Republic often grants new aid loans, thereby increasing its own problem. Rising interest rates around the world make it more likely that more and more debtors in the world's poorer south will become insolvent. At the latest, the effects will also be felt in the northern hemisphere. What the triple crisis of banking, real estate, and credit will end up doing to China itself is best not imagined. It will shake the foundations of social cohesion and the CP's dominance.

Home-made crises

The credit crisis may be caused by foreign and security policy, but the other two are homemade: Until recently, China's real estate and banking sectors were not regulated at all or were poorly regulated, which led to the credit excesses and manipulations. The leadership in Beijing has tried to consolidate the real estate sector with stricter rules over the past year, but this has been done with the intention of expanding the supremacy of the party, which has a stake in the companies, rather than protecting the people.

DW columnist Alexander Gorlach

But now that the two crises have merged, State President and Party leader Xi Jinping has no choice but to also reach out to people cheated out of their savings. The 400.000 savers who were defrauded in Henan are to receive a payment equivalent to 7.400 US dollars received. But these three billion US dollars will not be enough to appease those who have been cheated.

For Xi Jinping and his nomenklatura, the protests that are currently breaking out all over the country are a novelty. What's new is that the people don't care about the disadvantages they face as a result of their protests. Respect for the government is gone since it came out that the provincial government in Henan used the Corona warning app to stop people from protesting.

Corruption and mismanagement continue to flourish

Xi Jinping took office in 2013 with the promise to fight rampant corruption. Even then, he was accused of using his anti-corruption campaign only to throw political opponents in jail. Ten years later, corruption and mismanagement are still thriving. Xi's record looks like this at the moment: The People's Republic is still groaning under the government's zero-COVID strategy: supply chains are disrupted, entire industrial zones closed. Economic data have plummeted, and youth unemployment is at 18.4 percent, the highest it has been in a long time.

The housing market in China was seen as a natural investment market for the middle class. Prices continue to rise because of them. Developers could finance themselves so cheaply and build more and more houses on credit. These are now losing value by the minute. But where assets are destroyed, unemployment and impoverishment threaten, the revolt is not far away.

For now, Xi seems determined to solve all problems with money. In view of the gigantic financial volume that could swallow up three times China's crisis, however, it cannot be ruled out that violence will be used against the country's own people. In any case, the middle class, whose social security is in danger, could start protests that the country has not seen since 1989.

Alexander Gorlach is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and a Research Associate at the Internet Institute at Oxford University. After spending time in Taiwan and Hong Kong, this region of the world, especially the rise of China and what it means for the free world, became his core theme. He held various positions at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.