Gaps in NI record whilst full time student due to minimal income

Sillychuckie

As a full time student in my late teens, I did some small jobs during the summer holidays and earned a very small income.

As a result, HMRC have ignored the 'full time student' part and considered the year a gap in my NI record.

My official record shows:

2002-03 - Year is not full
You have contributions from >
Paid employment: £5.81
It's too late to pay for this year. You can usually only pay for the last 6 years.

Is there anything I can do? This seems bonkers.
The £5.81 is accurate - I really earned very little delivering some papers or something like that.


The next year is a similar story:

2003-04 - Year is not full
You have contributions from
Paid employment: £165.43


Of course they wrote to me many years ago asking if I wanted to voluntarily pay to make the difference up, but at the time, I could barely afford to, and didn't really understand the implications.

I may still have sufficient years, but, it seems rather wrong for penalizing the full time students who earn a minimal income by removing a qualifying year from their NI contribution record.

Is there any point contacting HMRC or is it just a case of 'those are the rules - tough'.

Thanks.
SC

Sillychuckie

Never mind.. I think I based my post on an incorrect assumption that students get tax credits.
I saw in my earlier years that I did, but this was probably age-related credits.

I guess the work didn't cause me not to get the credits - I wouldn't have got them anyway (and the fact I didn't pay extra to get them is my own fault now).

Answered my own question. Please ignore, unless I am mistaken any further.
Thanks.

SC

SkyeKnight

Sillychuckie wrote: »

As a result, HMRC have ignored the 'full time student' part and considered the year a gap in my NI record.

They didn't ignore the "full time student" part - being a full time student is one of the few ways of not qualifying for pension years (the others that I know of are: being in prison and living on your multi-million pound trust fund without working). You would get years for claiming benefits, looking after small children or leaving school at 16 to work in McDonalds, however. Anyway, no point in contacting HMRC unless the rules have changed recently.

There are some exceptions for certain training courses lasting less than one year, or for years when you are 16-18 if you are over a certain age - so do investigate these.

badmemory

Those early years are only going to matter if you aren't going to make the max 35 years before retirement age anyway, so, unless you plan on having 20 years in the future that you won't earn NI credits, stop worrying about it.