Voluntary Class 3 NIs
sandy
Member
We are trying to figure out if a person who is receiving state pension beenfits can pay class 3 NICs to increase their entitlement. I don't think so but I am not sure and GOV UK states that voluntary class 3 NICs can be paid if a person has reached state pension age but it does not go on to say whether they person must have deferred receipt of their state pension. Thanks in anticipation of the help.
Comments
Best bet is to get the client to create a Gateway account and use that service to see what they can pay. Otherwise you're guessing.
Here's the wording I use for this situation:
You must be eligible to pay voluntary National Insurance contributions for the time that the contributions cover. You can usually only pay for gaps in your National Insurance record from the past 6 years. You can check your NIC record, and eligibility to pay voluntary contributions, online through the Gov.uk website.
The current rate of payment for Class 3 NICs is £15 per week. Backdated payments for previous years are paid at different rates, based on how long ago it was and the rates in force at the time.
A full payment of 52 weeks at £15 in 2019/20 would be £780 and would increase your state pension by 1/35 of the single tier state pension. This means that a £780 investment would produce a state pension entitlement of £250 pa in today’s terms. The state pension increases in payment by at least 2.5% pa and Class 3 NICs could therefore represent excellent value for money in your situation.
When HMRC had its own website it provided information at three levels of detail, the gov.uk is the even "dumber and dumber" version almost designed to lead astray by omission, go staright to the Manual, this might help https://gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/national-insurance-manual
Thanks for that, really helped to clarify.