HMRC, not pension service.

DavidL1

molerat said:

Have you checked her record in the past few days as the big annual update has just been run ?

We hadn't, but have now, and surprisingly, 3 years before 2006 are now showing something different.
2 show:
You did not make any contributions this year

And 1 shows:
You have contributions from
Paid employment: £19.66

None of which can be paid for now.

DavidL1

I think it's probably HMRC she needs to be writing to in the first instance. As molerat says, you need to get the exact status of all those 'year is not full, we're checking your record..' NI years sorted out before the Pension Serivce (or us) are going to be able to advise on potentially how to improve her pension......

My wife had a reply to her letter to HMRC and it's sadly as informative as the web site is.

It just shows the crucial years from 2006-2007 through to 2014-20015 as "Tax Year Under Investigation" and the letter says nothing about why that is despite her asking specifically about that situation. Consequently there's no option to pay any class 3 voluntarily.

Does anyone have any further suggestions on how to get this situation resolved - before the drop dead date next April?

molerat

Get your MP involved.  When they start asking questions it often gets someone put on the case.

DavidL1

To conclude and to say thank you for the assistance here, we've finally got this resolved.

Prior to contacting our MP we tried phoning HMRC again and this time we made progress.
We found that several years had been missed from my wife's contributions, which HMRC corrected after we completed a form for Home Responsibilities Protection. Consequently we've managed to pay just the few years class 3 voluntary NICs needed to boost her state pension to the full.