Voluntary National Insurance contributions
Normally, you need 35 qualifying years of contributions to get the full State Pension (currently £221.20 per week). The amount you receive depends on your number of ‘qualifying’ National Insurance (NI) years. If you have missed any years, you are able to fill these by paying voluntary NI contributions online.
How Voluntary National Insurance contributions works:
- You need at least 10 qualifying NI years to get the minimum state pension (currently £63.20 per week)
- The more qualifying years you get after you have achieved the 10 years, the bigger state pension you will receive.
- You achieve a qualifying year typically by being employed, self employed or while on certain benefits.
- If you do have sufficient contributions in one tax year, that entire year will not count as a qualifying year and therefore does not count towards your state pension.
However, you can voluntarily purchase full or part years to top your pension up.
Normally, you can only buy back up to 6 years but there are currently transitional rules in place so you are able to purchase up to 19 years. You need to be quick though as the deadline for making the payment is 5 April 2025. See below for a guide on what to do next:
Step 1: Check if you have any gap years or already qualify for the full State Pension
Use the following link to access your State Pension summary.
https://www.gov.uk/check-national-insurance-record
You will be able to see:
- Your full National Insurance record
- If you have any missing or part years
- Whether you can make voluntary contributions
Step 2: How much will it cost and is it cost effective?
If you have missing years, you need to check your pension forecast. Using the forecast, you will be able to see:
- Your state pension age
- Your weekly forecast
- The maximum State Pension you can receive if you make voluntary contributions
- How many years you need to contribute to reach your maximum
- How much you need to pay to fill in the gaps
Now you should be able to calculate whether it is cost effective to pay the additional years using your maximum forecast and the contribution you need to make to reach that maximum.
Remember, if you are already projected to receive the full State Pension (currently £221.20) there is no benefit to topping up even if you have missing years as you cannot receive more that the full State Pension.
Step 3: Are you able to fill in the gaps for free
You may be able to earn NI years through other scenarios. These need to be manually claimed rather than automatically added:
- Caring for a child in the family – provided you are/were between 16 and state pension age and the child is yours
- On statutory sick pay
- Unemployed and actively seeking work
- On employment and Support Allowance
- Caring for a sick/disabled person
This list is not exhaustive please contact us for more information.
Step 4: You have until 5 April 2025 to fill any gaps between 2006 and 2016
Time is running out, and you must act before 5 April 2025 to complete missing years from 2006 to 2016. From 6 April 2025, you will only be able to fill gaps in the previous 6 tax years.
You should be able to make a payment online if you decide topping up is the right thing for you. Alternatively, you can call The Future Pension Centre or the Pension Service for further information or to make the payment. You can also use the following link to request a call back and this will extend the deadline, even if you do not get a call back until after 5 April 2025 (please make sure you keep a screen shot of the call-back confirmation message you should receive)
For more information please contact us.