If you are going on a temporary work assignment to another EU/EEA member state, you probably heard or read about certain rules regarding the coordination of social security contributions. Your employer might have also already informed you about the A1 form, and the need to obtain it as soon. Well, since it is a work-related matter, the question of tax and social contributions is always brought into question. We are not going to discuss tax here since it's out of our scope and domain, but we can touch on social contributions, which usually include unemployment insurance benefits and supplements, accident, injury, and sickness benefits, old-age, disability and survivors' pensions, family allowances, reimbursements for medical and hospital expenses or provision of hospital or medical services. All these need to be paid in the country of employment, and since you would be temporarily working in another EU country, they would have to be paid to that country as well. How to avoid that?

That is where the A1 form comes into question.

A1 is a statement of the applicable legislation used to prove that you pay social contributions in another EU country, in order to avoid paying double contributions.

So A1 form will exempt you from paying social contributions in the country of your temporary work assignment. The A1 form needs to be requested and issued before the business trip, and you have to have it with you from day one. It is not to be confused with the S1 form since they are often used simultaneously. The S1 form will allow for actual access to healthcare in the country of temporary employment.

Let's see the two most common examples: