National Insurance contributions

[BenNovice]

Please help me people...........here's the story..............

 

I worked for 13 years within a public company where my wages were paid into the bank after deductions and i paid NI and will recieve a pension when it matures.

Then for 13 year i went self-employed with a gang of builders and never paid NI,when i started nobody paid it and i was told 'we are self-employed and dont need to pay it'.

For the past 3 years i have been in Europe and not living/working in UK.

 

Anyway......................i am coming back to england and hope to start work in the public sector and will need to complete a P60? form when i start work.But my question is...........what about the national insurance what i believe should have been paid,will the arrears come to light.Will it be backdated,if so for how many years?

 

Please advise me.

[honeybee13]

Hello there.

 

I don't claim to be an NI expert and I'm not sure what you mean about it being backdated.

 

As I understand it, years when you don't pay NI mean that your pension is less when you get to retirement age. I don't think they will insist on your making up the arrears, but you may well find that your future pension isn't the maximum unless you make up the contributions.

 

You could have a look on the directgov website and also look at a pension forecast for yourself to see the impact of the missing years.

 

My best, HB

[Gbarbm]

Hi Ben

In order to obtain a qualifying year for NI purposes, you have to have earned above the lower earnings limit (LEL) for NI for 52 weeks of the year. If you were working for a public body, I would imagine that you would have been paid well above the LEL so no worries there. These are Class 1 NI contributions which are paid over to HMRC by your employer.

Now the self employed work is a bit different, you are supposed to register with the NI office and pay Class 2 contributions by direct debit of approximately £2 odd per week; you only pay Class 4 NI if your self employed profits exceed a certain amount (think it's about £7 or £8k) and this is done automatically via your self assessment return.

The best think to do in my opinion is go to HMRC website, click on contact us, then click on national insurance. You can check if you have sufficient qualifying contributions and if not you can make arrangements to pay voluntary contributions to make up the shortfall.

When you commence employment, you won't have an in date P45 from the previous employer so you will need to complete form P46 and tick the "this is my only or main job" box.

Hope this helps....happy to discuss if you have any more queries

Kind regards

Gbarbm

[BenNovice]

Thankyou for the replies.

 

Apparently i never paid class 2 national insurance which would have been for 13 years.I guess thats alot of backdated money owed if thats the proceedure.Though surely the debt can only go back 6 years? The last 3 years i have been not working/not in uk.

I dont want to be in trouble and want to know the worst case scenerios and amount of debt.

Thanks again.

[honeybee13]

Well, as has been said, one way to find out is to log on to the NI website and see what they know about you. That doesn't tell them where to find you, I don't think.

 

My best, HB

[Gbarbm]

I thought you might say that..... :-/

However, thanks to the statute of limitations, recovery of the contributions is time barred after 6 years unless HMRC have issued a protective writ.

[jadeybags]

The contributions now are 2.50 per week self employed NI, back then would have been less. I know my mum had underpaid her NI due to bringing up children, so she paid a cash sum a few years before retiring.

[BenNovice]

Well, as has been said, one way to find out is to log on to the NI website and see what they know about you. That doesn't tell them where to find you, I don't think.

 

My best, HB

 

Thankyou.

Yes i went to the website and it gives contact details etc.

I found somewhere that offered to check class 2 national insurance..............though i have no class 2 number.

All i have is my national insurance number and i cant see anywhere to 'type it in'

All i have is my

[Gbarbm]

Hi Ben

I think they could be referring to the UTR (unique taxpayer reference number) which is allocated when you register for self assessment