State Pension NI qualifying years

DuffNCustard

When calculating entitlement to the state pension (2016 and onwards) I understand that one will need to have paid NO for 35 qualifying years to obtain full state pension. How are years where only 10 months or less of NI have been paid treated? I retired on a comapany pension on 31 December 2012 so for the 2012-2013 qualifying year I only paid 8 months worth of NI. I am assuming that a qualifying year is the same as a tax year.

taylornj

You can ask how many years of NI contributions you have. It's on the HMRC site.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ni/intro/check-record.htm#5

https://online.hmrc.gov.uk/shortforms/form/NIStatement

I did this for myself, only because there was some mix up at one point and National Insurance payments were lost by HMRC confusing the payments sending them to the wrong office. I got a reply from them might have been 2 months later.

If you work and pay National Insurance contributions during any tax year that counts as a Qualifying Year.

Triumph13

It works on the amount you earned in the year, not the number of months you worked. If you earned more than the limit (which is a bit over £5k from memory) then it counts as a qualifying year. If you think you may be close to that then google the limit