NI contributions during my PhD

Windy_day

I have a gap of 6 years for my NI that corresponds to the time I was doing my PhD, during the last 2 I had a child (hence the extra years), I was only paid for 6 months as that was their maternity allowance but I wasn’t aware of childcare benefits and I only opened a tax free childcare account when my daughter was over 2. Could I get those 2 years of NI contributions even though I wasn’t on any childcare benefits at the time?

p00hsticks

I'm not sure what you mean by 'a tax free childcare account' and how that relates to NI contributions ?

It's Child Benefit that comes with NI credits, but as far as I'm aware you can only backdate new claims for Child Benefit for three months.

HMRC are bringing something in to allow high earning couples to go back further if they didn't claim because they'd end up paying it all back, and I think there is also a  mechanism for transferring the credits from one parent to the other if the 'wrong' one claimed, but neither seem appropriate in your case. 

molerat

Before you expend too much energy chasing this do you actually need those years ?  Which years are they ?  What does your forecast state ?