Gap in NIC contributions

It doesn't need to be unbroken, you just have to have 44 whole tax years during which you made the minimum required contributions (which means a whole tax year will still count if you made twice the contributions for half the year).

Live with it. A 3 year shortfall in your record should, by my estimate, only reduce your basic state pension by today's equivalent of £7 a week.

Does that mean that if you start paying NI contributions at age 18, and continue to do so without a break, you can stop paying when you reach 62 and still qualify for the full state pension?

Chris

Why is it the Contributions Agency fault? I'd say it was your fault.

Why don't you write to them and ask them to check if you have a gap?

If you are not working, that is the case. However if you are working, then you have to pay NICs until you are 65, after which date you are exempt.

Note that you will also get extra contributions to the S2P, on top of SERPs and Graduated Pension.

Yes, theoretically. If you are working and have sufficient income to pay NICs, you will still have to pay them, even if you have a full contribution record. Also if you are over 60 and not working, you can get contributions credited to you even if you are not registered as unemployed, e.g. early retired.

Bill

You can stop working sooner than that, I guess, if you can afford to pay voluntary Class 3 NICs out of savings. Or bimble along as nominally self-employed but in fact making no profit to speak of, and by paying Class 2 NICs it'll only cost you £104 to buy each extra year.

You may have to pay them, but failing to pay them won't reduce your basic state pension, it'll just land you in the slammer for tax evasion.

By the way, are you treated as having paid NICs while you're "inside"?

Why are you worried about your State pension and how much you have paid into it when, if you were a former Soviet citizen, you could now come here and get a BIGGER pension for not paying any NI contributions than some poor UK sod who has worked and paid NI all their life!!!

What a stupid country this is! Why do we put up with it!!!

John.

Why is it the Contributions Agency fault? I'd say it was your fault.

Why don't you write to them and ask them to check if you have a gap?

If anyone wants the correct URL try this:

Typical tabloid pap. They don't get a pension, they get income support, which happens to be bigger than the basic pension. So what? A local in a similar position would get it too.

I'm non-resident in the UK and have been paying Class 3 voluntary contributions for many years. I assume I can stop paying at age 62 then.

Chris

I would have thought so, but non standard cases need specialist advice. Try the contributions agency.

Bill

Why not at age 60 since you get credits, as a man, between 60 and 65? Of course, it may be different if you live abroad, for all I know.

By the way, is it 60 and over, or just over 60?

True, but isn't this likely to become a significant drain on the economy?

What is needed is an immigration policy which allows in young professionally qualified people, from anywhere. The UK needs lots of those, to make up for the cost of its ageing population.

Instead of the ludicrous "let in people from former colonies because we feel guilty about having exploited them centuries ago" policy which ran for decades.

Now that's being supplemented by the "let in anyone coming from the EU". The real problem is that those are of course the most enterprising people (immigrants usually are) and coming from Russia they are mostly the crooks and the pimps.

I doubt it. No more so than if they stayed home. See below.

If you import lots of keen hardworking foreign youngsters, you're hardly going to kick them out again when they're due to retire.

That's hardly a new idea. Freedom to move around and settle anywhere you like within the EU (provided you're an EU national) has been a cornerstone of EU policy right from its very inception, when it was still called the EEC.

The only thing that's changing is that the EU is expanding to embrace countries which have traditionally been viewed as "poorer". I'm not sure I understand why this is happening, but the implications are clear. The rules of the club are that the richer ones subsidise the poorer ones so that we all exceed some minimum standard of living.

Now that's going to cost the net contributors into the pot a lot of money. But that won't really change if lots of Russians come over here. It'll mean a greater direct drain on our resources, but a smaller drain on Russian resources. This will filter back so that less pot money needs to go to Russia, and less pot money will need to come from here. So it all balances out.

Psst! Wanna buy a Russian wife?

I tend to agree. The bit about the youngsters coming in is also living on borrowed time because they will retire one day too. But that's what funding pensions from present taxes is; living on borrowed time.

That's a popular pastime. Have you ever looked into it seriously? For some reason, fat old ugly boring English men are supposed to think that an attractive Russian woman is going to be less fussy with regard to men than an English girl. So what are the Russian girls after?

A marriage of course; hang in there for 3 years or so and you are sorted out; you can then walk out of a marriage without a word and 2 years later drop in on a solicitor and he will collect half the man's present assets for you.

I am sure there are genuine cases but separating them out up front is going to be quite impossible given the massive incentive to gold-dig...

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Can a *self-employed* local get income support?

I thought we were talking about pensioners.

Err, no. I believe you have to be UK resident to get the 5 years of credit from age 60 to 65.

But a follow up question.

I believe it is only given because women retire at 60 hence equal opportunities etc. But will this 'freebie still apply after 2010 when the retirement age for women starts to rise to match men?

Mark BR

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

OK - can a pensioner, previously self-employed, get income support? And if so, but if a self-employed local non-pensioner cannot, then why not? [Income support being relevant to both old & young...]