Mind The Gap! - Why everyone should check their National Insurance record
A gap in your National Insurance (NI) record could seriously affect the level of state pension you receive when you retire. It is essential that we all take a personal responsibility to check our NI data every year to ensure it has been recorded correctly. Unlike underpaid income tax, HMRC will not send you reminder letters to fill these gaps or to check if the information held is correct.
There are a number of reasons why you genuinely may have a gap, this could be because you were…
employed but had low earnings
unemployed and were not claiming benefits
self employed but did not pay contributions because of small profits
living abroad
If you are in receipt of certain benefits you will get automatic credits to provide you with a qualifying year for NI, where your earnings aren’t high enough for that year to otherwise qualify. The state benefits that provide eligibility for NI and which are pertinent to employees are:
employment and support allowance
maternity allowance
child benefit for a child under 12 since April 2010 (prior to 2010 home responsibility protection could provide credits for children under 16)
carer’s allowance or income support
working tax credit with a disability premium so your earnings capacity is restricted
universal credit
You can check your National Insurance record here. You will need a government gateway user ID and password, if you don’t have one, you can create one as part of the process.
Once you’ve logged on, what should you be looking for?
If your employed, check to see if the payments that are logged against your record are the actual payments you received. Does the total of the NIC (which you can find by clicking on the view details against each tax year) equal the total on your P60 for that year? If you are self employed, are your self employment class 2 contributions showing?
If you identify errors on your NI record, its important that you raise this with HMRC as soon as possible by calling 0300 200 3500*
If you spot gaps and it makes sense to you for there to be a gap, you may want to pay voluntary national insurance contributions to get your record up to date. You can usually only pay for gaps from the last 6 years. You may be able to pay for gaps of more than 6 years, but it will depend on your age.
If you are unsure whether or not to pay the voluntary national insurance contributions, it’s always best to get advice. The Future Pension Centre can be contacted on 0800 731 0175* for any questions on the state pension.
Don’t miss out, don’t leave it too late to check your record!
*these numbers were correct at the time of writing.