Missing pension contributions

RobM99

penners324 said:

NI isn't pension contribution. Is tax.

 Is it? Why is there a return on money invested then? I've never had a return from proper tax.

molerat

RobM99 said:

penners324 said:

NI isn't pension contribution. Is tax.

 Is it? Why is there a return on money invested then? I've never had a return from proper tax.

There isn't.  NI credits, sometimes paying nothing for them, simply give you access to certain benefits.  How much you pay in (generally) has no relationship to how much you can get out.

dunstonh

RobM99 said:

penners324 said:

NI isn't pension contribution. Is tax.

 Is it? Why is there a return on money invested then? I've never had a return from proper tax.

There is no money invested.   State pension is a benefit that you qualify for.

I haven't paid NI for years, yet I still get NI credits each year.    

Albermarle

I've never had a return from proper tax.

How about all the free public services, like the NHS, schools, police etc ?

facade

Lucylastik said:

I find all this missing pension contribution HIGHLY DUBIOUS.

I've also checked my NI contributions and found that for the years I was in higher education, I have gaps. (despite my working every hour I wasn't in University with THREE different jobs) so now, I'm lumbered with not only a WHOPPING STUDENT LOAD I also have no NI contributions, or, ones I now have to top up.

Thanks Tories.

Actually, you might be able to thank Labour if you got 3 full years credited for age 16,17,18. Labour introduced this in 1975 so that people who stayed on at school* didn't lose out compared to leaving at 15 and getting a job without qualifications.

It was Labour under Gordon Brown that abolished it, but it did take them until April 2010, (Unless it was Cameron/Clegg, but they didn't get in until May 2010)

*Which lead to a widespread, but wrong, belief that you got credited with NI in FT education, so University or College years would count. This shocked old fogies like me, when we accessed our NI records and discovered we were down 3 years and couldn't make them up because they were time barred.

RobM99

Albermarle said:

I've never had a return from proper tax.

How about all the free public services, like the NHS, schools, police etc ?

What? We don't pay for them? 

nigelbb

Silvertabby said:

tr7phil said:

Lucylastik said:

I find all this missing pension contribution HIGHLY DUBIOUS.

I've also checked my NI contributions and found that for the years I was in higher education, I have gaps. (despite my working every hour I wasn't in University with THREE different jobs) so now, I'm lumbered with not only a WHOPPING STUDENT LOAD I also have no NI contributions, or, ones I now have to top up.

Thanks Tories.

The more jobs you had, the less likely you would be to hit the NI threshold in any one of them.  Unlike tax, NI contributions are based on each individual job.

Phil beat me to it.  If you didn't pay any NI then you can hardly complain about not receiving any NI credits.

Incidentally, it was Tony Blair's Labour government who introduced university tuition fees, not the Tories.

To be fair when student tuition fees were introduced in 1998 they were only £1,000 per year which is about £1,500 in today's money. It's the evil Tories who raised tuition fees to their current level of £9,250 per year.

Silvertabby

nigelbb said:

Silvertabby said:

tr7phil said:

Lucylastik said:

I find all this missing pension contribution HIGHLY DUBIOUS.

I've also checked my NI contributions and found that for the years I was in higher education, I have gaps. (despite my working every hour I wasn't in University with THREE different jobs) so now, I'm lumbered with not only a WHOPPING STUDENT LOAD I also have no NI contributions, or, ones I now have to top up.

Thanks Tories.

The more jobs you had, the less likely you would be to hit the NI threshold in any one of them.  Unlike tax, NI contributions are based on each individual job.

Phil beat me to it.  If you didn't pay any NI then you can hardly complain about not receiving any NI credits.

Incidentally, it was Tony Blair's Labour government who introduced university tuition fees, not the Tories.

To be fair when student tuition fees were introduced in 1998 they were only £1,000 per year which is about £1,500 in today's money. It's the evil Tories who raised tuition fees to their current level of £9,250 per year.

They had no choice.  Tony Blair's aim was to get at least 50% of youngsters to uni (and so off the youth unemployment statistics) and so by the time the Tories returned to power the cost of financing all of the useless mickey mouse degrees was an unbearable burdon on the taxpayer.

Without Blair's meddling we would probably still have 'free' uni education for those that matter - medicine, teaching, science, etc etc and fewer burger flippers with useless degrees.

Albermarle

Without Blair's meddling we would probably still have 'free' uni education for those that matter - medicine, teaching, science, etc etc and fewer burger flippers with useless degrees.

I think it is fair to say, there is a middle ground of graduates, who did not do STEM subjects, but also did not do Mickey Mouse degrees.

Thinks like economics, history, business. modern languages etc come to mind. Even if the subject is not followed through in employment, the Uni course will have had some positive effects on their ability to think/reason/learn etc .

However I fully agree that the objective for 50% to go to Uni, when many would have been better on more vocational courses, was a daft objective.

thirtytoseventy

I stand ready to be corrected but I'm sure the legislation was introduced under the Major government. The Sept 1998 intake was the first to enter uni paying fees and they would have been applying in Sept 1997. Blair entered Downing Street in May 1997. On the flip side, they sure didn't stop it! As much as I'm no fan of 'evil Tories', fees went up to around £3,000 in 2006 (still Blair), then £9,000+ from 2012 (coalition) - lest we forget the LibDems rolling over and sacrificing their keynote policy on that one!