Date posted: 12th Aug 2024
Ensuring that your national insurance record is up-to date is extremely important in the coming months, particularly with the window to top up your national insurance contributions, closing on 5 April 2025.
Your national insurance contributions record will determine the amount of state pension that you are entitled to, when you retire.
At the moment, you need 35 years of qualifying contributions to obtain a full state pension at retirement.
For those taxpayers that have gaps in their national insurance record, HMRC may allow them to voluntarily top up their contributions to fill any gaps and obtain extra state pension as long as this is done by 5 April 2025.
It is important to realise that you cannot get any more state pension if you contribute for more than 35 years. Therefore, ensure you consider whether you need to contribute for the missing years, particularly if you will have 35 years of contributions, by the time you retire.
To check your national insurance record, you should log into your personal tax account at https://www.gov.uk/personal-tax-account or obtain a state pension forecast from The Pension Service by completing form BR19 and posting it to them https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/application-for-a-state-pension-statement
If you do complete form BR19, then do this sooner rather than later as the reply times from Government bodies are extreme, to say the least!
As ever, if you need to discuss this, , contact our expert team.
