Voluntary Class 3 NI Contributions – How to Pay

Tom99

Sledgehead wrote: »

PS: remember to say if you concur with this assessment so that we can have more confidence in this approach.

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]That's interesting, unfortunately I can't check if you are right because I just posted them a cheque for 2016/17.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Also later posted them a cheque for 2017/18 which I later found out I did not need to pay for as I am due a credit. Luckily a refund was paid.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]It is only due to the MSE Forum that I found out about this credit. HMRC had written to me saying I could pay more NI to top up and, even today, my online forecast say I can pay to top up – no mention of the credit at all![/FONT]

Linton

What happened with my wife's application:
1) Ring HMRC - they asked her to get confirmation from the Future Pension Service that this was in her best interests. I this is needed mainly if you are buying pre 2016 years.
2) After talking to HMRC again they sent her a form to fill in. It included a request for bank details.
3) As she just needed to buy the current year's NI, HMRC have taken the contributions quarterly by DD.

molerat

As long as you are happy that your NI record is accurate, understand what the figures on your forecast mean and understand how the system works you don't really need to ask HMRC for confirmation. You probably only have a 50/50 chance of getting a correct answer anyway.

Tom99

molerat wrote: »

As long as you are happy that your NI record is accurate, understand what the figures on your forecast mean and understand how the system works you don't really need to ask HMRC for confirmation. You probably only have a 50/50 chance of getting a correct answer anyway.

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Yes a 50/50 chance is worrying but in many cases you are not given enough information in the forecast to make the correct choice. Particularly when NI top up years are involved.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]You may be able to work out that topping up 4 years will get you a full pension but are not told that maybe some years for which a figure is quoted ( say 2006-2015) won't add a jot to you pension.[/FONT]

molerat

Tom99 wrote: »

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]You may be able to work out that topping up 4 years will get you a full pension but are not told that maybe some years for which a figure is quoted ( say 2006-2015) won't add a jot to you pension.[/FONT]

Which is covered by

molerat wrote: »

understand what the figures on your forecast mean and understand how the system works

Unfortunately some of the telephone advisors are not 100% up to speed.

lj12

@Sledgehead #11

Fantastic info - thanks! Adding another data point (me) to the 18 digit reference number - it is a match (for the 1st 17 digits) as described in your post.

As for the last digit: I suspect maybe / it would make sense to me if it were some kind of checksum digit (like the credit card numbers have). On my one data point (18 digit reference number I got from HMRC) I tested the "Damm Algorithm" for digits check and got a match!

Search wikipedia for "Damm algorithm" - I can't post a link to the wiki page as a new forum user. I followed the 1st link in the External links section at the bottom of the wiki page "Damm validation & generation code in several programming languages". Then did copy&paste of the python code from the page and plugged in my number at the bottom. That worked: from the 1st 17 digits plugged in I recovered the 18-th digit.

Before that tried the "Luhn algorithm" (the checksum used for credit card numbers) - that failed to match.

coastline

Like many people I'm short due to the contracting out situation on the old pension. I thought I'd start to make some contributions from the April 2016 starting date as previous gaps won't benefit me even if they were filled.
After reading the government website I thought I'd ring the NI department just to confirm a few things. I'm going to make full year payments until my retirement age although I'll still be a bit short of the new pension. I've obtained an eighteen digit reference number over the phone as I planned to pay a full year using an online bank account.
2016-2017 is £733.20 or £14.10 a week but when I've checked the 2015-16 payments they are the same at £14.10 a week.As this is also a gap in my contributions I'm thinking this will cause confusion if I simply transfer £733.20 from an online bank account. If there is no way of highlighting 2016-2017 then the money could easily be paid for a year which will be no good to me.
I'm now thinking of posting a cheque with my instructions to save any problems.

p00hsticks

coastline wrote: »

Like many people I'm short due to the contracting out situation on the old pension. I thought I'd start to make some contributions from the April 2016 starting date as previous gaps won't benefit me even if they were filled.
After reading the government website I thought I'd ring the NI department just to confirm a few things. I'm going to make full year payments until my retirement age although I'll still be a bit short of the new pension. I've obtained an eighteen digit reference number over the phone as I planned to pay a full year using an online bank account.
2016-2017 is £733.20 or £14.10 a week but when I've checked the 2015-16 payments they are the same at £14.10 a week.As this is also a gap in my contributions I'm thinking this will cause confusion if I simply transfer £733.20 from an online bank account. If there is no way of highlighting 2016-2017 then the money could easily be paid for a year which will be no good to me.
I'm now thinking of posting a cheque with my instructions to save any problems.

Did the advisor not ask which year you were intending to pay ? My understanding was that the unique reference that they generate in order for you to do a faster payment would identify both you and the year which you are paying. I'll try to dig out the reference I was given to see if it ties in with Sledgeheads theory above.

I recently paid for 2017-18 via a faster payment and confirmed a couple of weeks later via my tax account that my record had successfully been updated for the correct year.

coastline

p00hsticks wrote: »

Did the advisor not ask which year you were intending to pay ? My understanding was that the unique reference that they generate in order for you to do a faster payment would identify both you and the year which you are paying. I'll try to dig out the reference I was given to see if it ties in with Sledgeheads theory above.

I recently paid for 2017-18 via a faster payment and confirmed a couple of weeks later via my tax account that my record had successfully been updated for the correct year.

I was given an eighteen digit number starting with 60 (no letters all numbers). I intended to pay two years from 2016 - 2018 and the figures given were £733.20 and £740. I was told the number was fine to use in the future.
I'm going to pay one year by post then see what happens.If it shows up online in my pension forecast then I'll pay the next one.Hopefully my account will show a bit of continuity by then and maybe I'll start using online banking.

PeskyBlunder

My wife paid voluntary Class 3 NICs in November to fill in gaps for two years - does anybody have any idea how long it takes for the online NI record to get updated? What is worrying me is that the reference number we were given does not indicate which years she was trying to fill. The reference number was 18 digits long and exactly matches the description posted above.