Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert.com has warned how thousands of people were blocked from trying to top-up their state pension ahead of a crucial deadline. This weekend gone was your last chance to purchase missing National Insurance years dating back to 2006.
After this deadline, you can only go back six tax years. Your state pension entitlement is dependent on how many National Insurance contributions you have built up during your life – so if you have gaps in your record, then you won’t get the full state pension.
The final day for the extended top-up period was this Saturday (April 5) ahead of the new tax year – but MSE reports that the website where you make the top-ups was mistakenly taken offline early.
MSE says as many as 21,000 people had tried to log in on Saturday to check their National Insurance record, but were met with a message saying the deadline to claim had passed.
One person posted on X/Twitter: “Unfortunately, it seems that @GOVUK closed the portal for NI top-ups yesterday ahead of today’s deadline! @MartinSLewis. Shame they didn’t stick to their own published deadline of today!”
If you were affected by this error, MSE says HMRC should contact you so you can still fill any gaps in your National Insurance record. MSE said: “In the meantime it’s worth hanging onto any proof you took of the problems, such as screenshots. And if you don’t hear anything, you can try to contact HMRC yourself via its various NI channels.”
A HMRC spokesperson told MSE: “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.”
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MSE had been urging people aged 40 to 73 to check whether they have gaps in their National Insurance record. In most cases, it costs £824 to buy a missing National Insurance year – and this adds up to £328 each year to your pre-tax state pension. It will cost you less if you’re missing partial years, or if you’re self-employed.
If you logged an inquiry with the Future Pension Centre for a call back before the deadline, you should still get a call back within about eight weeks, and you’ll still be able to pay for any gaps in your National Insurance record. Some people were also able to extend the deadline by an extra month just by logging into their National Insurance record on GOV.UK before the cut-off.
The new state pension has risen to £230.30 a week for the full amount, while the full basic state pension is now worth £176.45 a week. You claim the new state pension if you are a man who was born on or after April 6, 1951, or a woman who was born on or after April 6, 1953.
The basic state pension is claimed by men born before April 6, 1951, and women born before April 6, 1953. For the new state pension, most people need 35 qualifying years on their National Insurance record to get the full amount. For the old state pension, you normally need 30 qualifying years if you’re a man who was born between 1945 and 1951, or 44 qualifying years if you’re a man who was born before 1945.
If you’re a woman, you usually need 30 qualifying years if you were born between 1950 and 1953, or 39 qualifying years if were born before 1950.
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