How to actually pay voluntary Class 3 National Insurance Contributions!

patricia1066

BOWFER said:

We've had a pain with this, we paid my wife's voluntary contributions months ago and only a chance look in her government gateway revealed a message saying "underpayment - possible penalties"
3 hours of a phone call later, it seems to be sorted now.
We had proof of payment from the bank, it was done by BACS.

Your timing was about right, today I spoke to a lovely Scottish agent who told me that 10 weeks is needed to update the NI credits once payments are linked. This is because of the need to manually enter the update into the NI program. 

The payment itself won’t be seen on a different program for 10 working days. 

Yes, it’s recommended that I pay full years separately each with its own reference. Then if it’s missing there is a payment reference on the main HMRC account. 

Since April 2020 when HMRC removed the verify apps as a way of accessing our NI records, anyone who has no UK passport or driving license has to hold on the phone and ask for help to check when the credits are updated. 

xylophone

About time some sort of normal service was resumed.

Perhaps "working from home" has lost its appeal......

bigfer

I managed to get through to HMRC to confirm payment for additional years of NI after the Newcastle Pension Centre sent me an incorrect forecast back in 2017 which ignored my COPE, see my previous post.

The pension centre and government gateway said i needed to pay an additional 2 years to obtain maximum state pension. The gentleman from HMRC told me that i had 41 years full payment and only needed one extra year!! 

Not having any confidence in either department i have opted to pay for one year and check what that does to my pension forecast.
Paid by BAC with a unique reference number, seemed to go through easily enough and more straightforward than setting up the wife's monthly direct debit.

I shall follow up in a couple of weeks to see what further conflicting nonsense they can come up with.   

ALARA343

Where does the payer get the required 18 digit "Class 3 National Insurance reference number" (starting with 60) from please? My National Insurance number is obviously not it.

xylophone

https://www.gov.uk/pay-voluntary-class-3-national-insurance/bank-details#:~:text=You'll find it on,not have a reference number.

Contact HMRC if you do not have a reference number.

blessij21

I tried yesterday afternoon to get through to HMRC. After waiting for an hour and 14 minutes I got the message 'all our advisors are busy on other calls we cannot take your call at the moment Goodbye' and got cut off. I tried again at 8am this morning. The messages I had to listen to were slightly different to the previous day and after waiting for an hour I got through to someone. The actual process was quite straight forwards after that. My advice is if you get messages asking for your personal details, NI number , date of birth, etc then stay on the line as you are actually in a queue. If you just get the plinky plonky music and the message saying 'your call is important to us' give up as you will be disconnected after an hour. 8am seems a good time to try before the queues get too long.