HMRC is to give one last chance to thousands of people who were unable to check and top up to their full State Pension ahead of a crucial deadline on Saturday 5 April.
Saturday at 11.59pm was the end of the 2024/25 tax year, and the last chance to buy back any missing years National Insurance years all the way back to 2006.
But, the online service to make payments for the tax years from 2006/07 to 2020/21 was mistakenly taken offline a day earlier than announced, leaving thousands of people with computer error messages. Around 20,000 people who had logged in on April 5 with gaps between 2006/07 and 2020/21 were unable to do so.
A HMRC spokesperson said: “We’re sorry that customers were unable to use our online service on Saturday to top up National Insurance contributions for years prior to 2021. We will contact anyone affected directly about the payments they wanted to make to ensure they don’t miss out.”
Can you still buy back National Insurance years after the deadline?
You can usually pay voluntary contributions for the past six years in order to get the full State Pension, so from Sunday April 6, you can only buy back to 2019.
As Martin Lewis explained earlier this month: “The new state pension started in 2016 – this applies to men born after the April 5 1951 so 73 years old and younger women after April 5 1953 so 71 and younger.
“Think of as for each National Insurance year you get a token. If you get the token, you get the token for a full year. It goes into the state pension piggy bank.
“If you’ve got at least 10 years, you’re going to get some state pension. To get the full state pension needs around 35 years, it can be more, that’s just the typical figure. So, if you get 35 years of National Insurance contributions, you get the full state pension currently, £221 a week, but from next week, £230, pounds.”
How about the DWP call-back request form?
This wasn’t a problem for the separate DWP call-back request form. This remained live over the weekend and, if you submitted a request on or before 5 April, you will be called back and still be eligible to purchase your missing years back to 2006.
So, as you started the process of topping up on or by 5 April – either using its online service or by submitting a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) “call-back form” – you’d still be able to purchase NI contributions for the older years in question.
How do you get national insurance credits?
“You get these by working and currently earning over just over £6400 a year. Less than the threshold and you don’t get the year, but you can pay just a tiny bit to get the year.”
You can get NI credits by claiming certain benefits
“You can get it for childcare, when you’re looking at your own children on certain benefits, that give you National Insurance years, and if you’re a carer, you can get National Insurance credits as well.
“Some people may be missing years, typically, if you took time off work, if you had a low income, if you lived abroad, if you were a carer that didn’t claim or you didn’t claim the right child care credit.”
Recommended reading:
What does that mean?
“So when you when you claim Child Benefit, that triggers you getting National Insurance credits for childcare. But let’s say there’s two of you, one’s working, one’s not the working.
“Parent A claims the Child Benefit, they’re already getting National Insurance credits from work, so it needs to be the non working parent who claims Child Benefit, and they get the credits when they’re not working.
“If you did that wrong, you should check you can transfer those all credits for free, and it’s worth looking at now.”
