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itiswhatitis
Joined: 08 Aug 2011
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 Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 10:15 am Post subject: Paying Back National Health Payments |
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I started a new job a month ago and my former job (for 2 years) didn't have me enrolled in the national health insurance plan.
Will I have to pay back the premiums???
Will it have to be all at once???
Thanks!!! |
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ttompatz
Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Location: Kwangju, South Korea
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| Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 6:54 pm Post subject: Re: Paying Back National Health Payments |
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| itiswhatitis wrote: |
I started a new job a month ago and my former job (for 2 years) didn't have me enrolled in the national health insurance plan.
Will I have to pay back the premiums???
Will it have to be all at once???
Thanks!!! |
If you are on the same status of sojourn (did a transfer) AND they try to enroll you in the NHIC then yes, you get the bill for 100% of your outstanding premiums backdated from the time of your original entry on that visa. They will NOT let you make "payments" over time.
If you are on a new visa then no.
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hongdae2
Joined: 17 Sep 2006
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| Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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aww
Last edited by hongdae2 on Tue Aug 09, 2016 2:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ttompatz
Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Location: Kwangju, South Korea
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| Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 11:51 pm Post subject: |
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| hongdae2 wrote: |
correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe that you just have to leave the country and come back (get a new re-entry stamp on your passport) even if it is on the same day...and then you don't have to pay for the previous 2 years.
before, i think that there was a specific time frame you had to be out of the country in order to avoid the "back pay" for korean health insurance, but i read somewhere that they had recently changed it. |
You are correct. A new visa restarts the clock PROVIDED you do it before they come looking for their money.
There is no "out of the country" minimum time requirement.
On the other hand, TRANSFERing to a new employer while on the same status of sojourn does NOT reset the clock and you can get hit for ALL (100%) of the outstanding back-payments (your portion and your previous employer's portion as well).
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Troglodyte
Joined: 06 Dec 2009
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| Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 1:24 am Post subject: |
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| If he does get hit with the bill, will his former employer be required to pay half of it? |
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itiswhatitis
Joined: 08 Aug 2011
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| Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 2:07 am Post subject: |
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| Troglodyte wrote: |
| If he does get hit with the bill, will his former employer be required to pay half of it? |
Good point....anyone know if I will have to pay the entire amount or would it be half and half??? (half from me and half from former employer).
Thanks!!! |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 9:40 am Post subject: |
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| itiswhatitis wrote: |
| Troglodyte wrote: |
| If he does get hit with the bill, will his former employer be required to pay half of it? |
Good point....anyone know if I will have to pay the entire amount or would it be half and half??? (half from me and half from former employer).
Thanks!!! |
This depends on the facts of your situation.
If your previous job actually registered you as an Independent Contractor with the tax office, and paid in the required 3.3% of your income, then you will be held for 100%. If your contract stated that you were an employee you could have some argument against this, however your silence for 2 years provides some evidence that you agreed to it.
If you were hired as an Employee and your job just failed to register you at all, then your previous job could be (and should be) required to pay half. In some cases they could be required to pay 100%.
If your status or contract was not clear, then other facts come into play:
Did you have another form of health insurance or none at all?
If covered under another plan did your boss pay half?
Were you enrolled in the National Pension?
Did you pay Income Taxes? How much or what percentage rate?
There is a good chance that your former job could be forced to pay half.
FYI: If you weren't enrolled in the National Health Insurance then I'd guess that you weren't enrolled in Pension either. In that case the Pension office could very well be after you for 2 years of payments too. Pension and Health Insurance have separate registration but they are linked to check for scofflaws.
The good news if you have to pay, if you're from the US or Canada you can get that money back when you leave Korea.
If you were an employee, or if you were not a legally registered Independent Contractor, your ex-boss will have to pay half of that amount too.
If your ex-boss has to pay half of both Pension and Health Insurance for two years, even though you may have to pay half too, you will come out ahead in the end. |
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Scorpion
Joined: 15 Apr 2012
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:53 pm Post subject: |
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| ttompatz wrote: |
| hongdae2 wrote: |
correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe that you just have to leave the country and come back (get a new re-entry stamp on your passport) even if it is on the same day...and then you don't have to pay for the previous 2 years.
before, i think that there was a specific time frame you had to be out of the country in order to avoid the "back pay" for korean health insurance, but i read somewhere that they had recently changed it. |
You are correct. A new visa restarts the clock PROVIDED you do it before they come looking for their money.
There is no "out of the country" minimum time requirement.
On the other hand, TRANSFERing to a new employer while on the same status of sojourn does NOT reset the clock and you can get hit for ALL (100%) of the outstanding back-payments (your portion and your previous employer's portion as well).
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Ttompatz, I got a letter last week from the national health insurance people demanding 500,000 won from 2004-5. Apparently my then hogwan was playing fast and loose with the rules. Big surprise, I know. Anyway, I have had several new contracts since that time - and on three occasions left the country altogether for several months. I came back to Korea on brand new visas. Three times. Does this mean they can't claim against me?
I don't want to be financially penalized because my previous employer didn't make the necessary payments.
Thanks in advance, |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:13 am Post subject: |
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| Scorpion wrote: |
| ttompatz wrote: |
| hongdae2 wrote: |
correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe that you just have to leave the country and come back (get a new re-entry stamp on your passport) even if it is on the same day...and then you don't have to pay for the previous 2 years.
before, i think that there was a specific time frame you had to be out of the country in order to avoid the "back pay" for korean health insurance, but i read somewhere that they had recently changed it. |
You are correct. A new visa restarts the clock PROVIDED you do it before they come looking for their money.
There is no "out of the country" minimum time requirement.
On the other hand, TRANSFERing to a new employer while on the same status of sojourn does NOT reset the clock and you can get hit for ALL (100%) of the outstanding back-payments (your portion and your previous employer's portion as well).
. |
Ttompatz, I got a letter last week from the national health insurance people demanding 500,000 won from 2004-5. Apparently my then hogwan was playing fast and loose with the rules. Big surprise, I know. Anyway, I have had several new contracts since that time - and on three occasions left the country altogether for several months. I came back to Korea on brand new visas. Three times. Does this mean they can't claim against me?
I don't want to be financially penalized because my previous employer didn't make the necessary payments.
Thanks in advance, |
In the past the National Health Insurance and National Pension offices didn't follow up on people with new visas for past payments. However, according to the facts of your case, it seems that they have decided to go after anyone they can find who failed to properly enroll in the past, despite being on a new visa.
With all the complaining on Dave's about Independent Contractors not signing up as legally required for health insurance and pension, and the many ICs who have seen the IC contract as an opportunity to evade registration, it could be that they've decided to go after the IC scofflaws.
There was never any legal reason for the authorities not to follow up on these unpaid amounts, they just didn't do it for practical reasons. Now it seems they're responding again to the ESL community's complaints, and once again in a way opposite to what the whiners had anticipated. |
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Scorpion
Joined: 15 Apr 2012
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for your response. I have two questions.
1) What on earth is an 'independent contractor'? I have never encountered that term in the ESL industry prior to this thread.
2) Why did you use the term "whiner" in your post? How is expecting your employer to obey the law and provide government-mandated health care a reason to use a pejorative term like "whiners". Some complaints are entirely legitimate. Using the word whiner always seems like an attempt to deligitimize legitimate concerns and complaints. Remember, the scofflaws in these scenarios are usually the Korean employers.
Cheers.
ps: I'm also chuckled by your use of "scofflaw." Not a very commonly used word these days. Have you been watching old Seinfeld episodes.  |
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Who's Your Daddy?
Joined: 30 May 2010
Location: Victoria, Canada.
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:31 pm Post subject: |
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How many months do you plan on living in Korea? If you are leaving in 6 months I'd just ignore the bills, you'll have left before they escalate.
If you want to live here longer, visit the office. Ask them, what's this bill? Tell them to get the money from the old employer. Ask them why they didn't provide you health insurance in 2004? Tell them it is unreasonable, and you won't pay. Don't get too angry, just say it.
I was once billed retroactively for 6 months. But I had taken a two-week trip during the period. After I refused to pay, they only billed me for the period after the two week trip. |
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Scorpion
Joined: 15 Apr 2012
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:37 pm Post subject: |
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I'll be here for a few more years - but I do not want to pay this bill. It's encouraging to know that some people have gotten around such bills, or that technicalities might be on my side. I want to inform them that the person they should be going after is my old hogwan boss. Not me.
All advice is greatly appreciated. |
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mike in brasil
Joined: 09 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 6:51 am Post subject: |
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As long as you intend to use the national health care insurance while you're still here than you will either need to pay the balance or convince them you don't need to pay it.
Or look into getting private insurance and totally bypassing the the NHI. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:05 am Post subject: |
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| Scorpion wrote: |
Thanks for your response. I have two questions.
1) What on earth is an 'independent contractor'? I have never encountered that term in the ESL industry prior to this thread. |
There have been innumerable threads on Independent Contractors.
Independent Contractors are individuals who are not registered as "employees" by the organization they work for. They are instead registered as "Independent" meaning that they have to pay 100% of their own Pension and Health Insurance instead of having employers who pay half of each. They have income taxes withheld at a higher rate, 3.3%, instead of the lower rate that E2 English teachers generally should have deducted, below 2%.
Many individuals are legally working as Independent Contractors on E2 visas. Some benefit from this status and like it. Most would be better off as regular employees.
Some businesses are honest about signing up ICs. Some hide their intentions and essentially fool their workers with cleverly worded contracts and others commit fraud when signing up their workers as ICs by violating contracts that list them as employees. It isn't the IC status that is illegal in the latter cases, but fraud in violating the contract.
Relevant Threads:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=210465&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?p=2687780&highlight=#2687780
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=218655&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
| Scorpion wrote: |
| 2) Why did you use the term "whiner" in your post? How is expecting your employer to obey the law and provide government-mandated health care a reason to use a pejorative term like "whiners". Some complaints are entirely legitimate. Using the word whiner always seems like an attempt to deligitimize legitimate concerns and complaints. Remember, the scofflaws in these scenarios are usually the Korean employers. |
Many individuals have essentially gone along with being ICs because they came out ahead by cheating the system.
These people signed up as ICs knowingly. They knew that their bosses would come out ahead by not having the legal obligation to pay toward pension and health insurance. However, these individuals didn't sign themselves up as required by law. They expected to profit from the arrangement by ignoring the law, and usually they faced little chance of being caught.
For example: teachers from a country that can't get a Pension refund would rather just keep the 9% and not pay it in if they can't get it back. They gambled on the health insurance as well, saving another 6% or so. They were the lawbreakers - although "scofflaws" seems a better term. They were legal ICs and required to pay their own pension and health insurance. They didn't sign up and most never got caught.
The "whiners" are people on Dave's who complain about things not being "fair" or legal all the time. They make a lot of noise and then the authorities make things more "fair and equal" and that usually means that everyone has the worst possible situation forced upon them.
Until recently, Foreign workers in Korea had a 30% income exclusion when calculating income tax obligations. The Pension office began promoting this as a way to save on Pension as well. The employer and employee would each pay in 30% less.
This meant that some people would get slightly less money deposited into their pension account, although not all employers went along with this scheme devised by the Pension office. Public schools, however, jumped on this as a way to save money along with some hogwans.
For individuals from countries that cannot get pension refunds and for ICs, this was a good deal. So very few people were losing and most were losing very little.
Then the whiners began complaining about the 30% reduction in pension.
The result was that the government took away the 30% income tax exclusion, which also ended the 30% pension offset. This was a big hit for everyone because now everyone has to pay more income taxes. The increase in taxes means that essentially no one comes out ahead but most of us lose. This thanks to the whiners.
Whiners have also been complaining about the Independent Contractor status. This is a perfectly legal status in Korea and nearly half of all Koreans use some form of the IC status. It is also legal for foreign workers on all kinds of visas.
The whiners in the E2 teaching community would like to see this status ended. They don't think it treats them fairly.
The response of the Korean government is likely to be much different. The Korean government can't end the IC status since it is essential to the operation of the entire economy. Instead, they will likely crack down on foreign ICs who haven't paid in properly for Pension and Health insurance - without regard to whether they were actual scofflaws or unwitting dupes. Many bills for past due amounts could be sent out. Likewise, foreign teachers with any past visa status and registration status, including those coming in on new visas who used to be ignored, could be targeted for past due payments to the National Pension and Health Insurance in Korea.
| Scorpion wrote: |
| ps: I'm also chuckled by your use of "scofflaw." Not a very commonly used word these days. Have you been watching old Seinfeld episodes. |
Yes. I do watch old episodes of Seinfeld from time to time. I don't remember that particular term in the show but it's certainly plausible. I'm not sure if that or something else has kept the term "scofflaw" in my active personal lexicon. |
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