On the Reform of the Public Service Pension System from the Perspectives of Remuneration Structure and Retirement Income
Hui-Ping Feng *
Abstract
The Civil Servant Retirement Annuity System is one of Taiwan’s four major annuity systems designed for military, public service, teaching and labor personnel. Since the programs of reforming and planning the retirement annuity will not only influence hundreds of thousands of incumbent and retired civil servants but will also become a concrete indicator as well as a comparison to other annuity reforms, it can be foreseen that after the Act of Reforming Annuity System is sent to the Legislative Yuan for approving, the government will definitely face plenty of suspicions and challenges from the outside. This article will first focus on the structure of civil servants’ remuneration and retirement income, which can be derived from the upcoming act (drafted by the Examination Yuan and delivered to the Legislative Yuan on April 12, 2013) governing both the public functionaries’ retirement and the compensation given to their surviving dependents.
Meanwhile, controversies have arisen over whether the Principle of Legitimate Expectation may apply while enforcing the reform on annuity system, especially on those who have already secured the property rights under the current legal system. Is it necessary for us to protect these rights based on the principle? Or how do we ensure such protective mechanism while enforcing the new retirement and annuity system in the future? All of these concerns about our future annuity system are discussed here as a reference for our legislators.
Keywords: retirement annuity, income replacement rates, the principle of
legitimate expectation
* Executive Officer, Legal Affairs Committee, Directorate-General of Personnel Administration, Executive Yuan.