If a pension has not been subject to taxation up to now, this will become known to the tax office in future. The Retirement Income Act introduced a notification procedure. According to this, the statutory pension insurance institutions, the professional pension funds and the providers of funded life annuity insurance contracts have to electronically transmit notifications of pension withdrawals to the Central Allowance Office for Old-Age Assets (ZfA) as of 2005. The data is then forwarded to the responsible tax offices.
The pension withdrawal notifications contain, among other things, details such as first name, surname, date of birth, the personal identification number as well as the amount of the life annuities and other benefits.