No pension, no NI

Esox

greenglide wrote: »

HMRC take the figures they are supplied with at the year end, basically what is on the P60.

If your earnings are over £5,880 (ignoring if you earn over the upper earnings limit in a pay period) then it is a qualifying year.

HMRC cannot do anything else as that is the rules laid down in legislation.

Interesting but, in that case, why do they publish weekly/monthly threshold figures (when only an annual figure matters)?

I think this issue has been raised before. Say someone earns £6k in week one of the FY and doesn't work again, will that person gets a full year's worth of nSP entitlement?

Can't really find any official links that address this issue.

greenglide

Earnings above the upper earnings limit in any pay period are not counted, but £6,000 in one week / month would not work. Apart from that it is very flexible. This was explained in xylophone's link in post 10 - https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5586387 .

The amounts are given in weekly / monthly / annual values to enable people to calculate the NI that should be paid.

It was a truly weekly payment up to 1975 as NI was up till then paid by the weekly NI stamp. I think you had to have 50 stamps (including credits) per year otherwise you would have a shortfall. From 1975 the current variable system was introduced.

Esox

greenglide wrote: »

Earnings above the upper earnings limit in any pay period are not counted, but £6,000 in one week / month would not work. Apart from that it is very flexible. This was explained in xylophone's link in post 10 - .
...snip

Cheers for the link, the nearest thing I can find to cover this issue is from a third party website for students.

A ‘qualifying year’ sounds as though you might need to have a perfect 52 weeks of working for it to count. In fact, for ‘Class 1’ NICs, any tax year where you receive a minimum amount of earnings or credits (which you receive for example, if you cannot work because you are bringing up children who are aged under 12) can be a qualifying year. The 2017/18 tax year could be ‘banked’ as a qualifying year provided you have earned the equivalent of 52 x £113 (this amount is known as the Lower Earnings Limit) – total £5,876. Please note that any pay periods in which you have earned under the Lower Earnings Limit will not count towards the total.

So does that mean you could earn £5,876 over the FY but still have an impaired annual NIC record (as there could be some weeks where you earned below the LEL or even nothing at all)?

xylophone

https://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/money/personal-finance/tax/national-insurance-contributions

Above dated 2014 See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tax-and-tax-credit-rates-and-thresholds-for-2017-18/tax-and-tax-credit-rates-and-thresholds-for-2017-18