Not registered as self employed for National Insurance?

starray

Hi, can anyone help please? I called the National Insurance hotline to fill in any payable gaps and they told me I had to top up two lots of money for two recent tax years. I paid. Then I got a letter today saying that they do not have me registered as self employed for national insurance purposes so they are unable to allocate these payments to my national insurance record.  They then stated to please register as self employed or by posting form CWF1. 

I am honestly dumfounded! I have been reporting my self-employed income through my tax returns for 20 years now, even having an accountant to help me at one point and at no point have I declared on my tax return that I am no longer self-employed.  I have never been gainfully self-employed and just made small sums of money each year which I have always declared. 

Could this be a mistake on their part? I'm really worried as it says on the CWF1 form - . If you are late telling us about your self-employment, you may attract a penalty.   According to them, I've not been registered for 20 years so this would be a bit of disaster to put it mildly!  

Have I missed something or could this be a mistake on their part?  I am going to call of course, but I wanted to be clear where I stood before making the call.  Many thanks. 

Dazed_and_C0nfused

Have you ever registered as self for National Insurance purposes?

starray

20 years ago I registered as self-employed. Is there a difference between registering as self-employed, and registering as self-employed for national insurance purposes? Is there a separate form or something?  I mean - I have a UTR and a National Insurance number and the people on the hotline were able to tell me how much I owed exactly on the payable gaps so surely I must be registered? 

starray

I mean - I have my tax calculations from HMRC all these years where I've declared my SE earnings.  The only thing I can think is that in the past year I've started employed work but I'm still doing my self-employed work and so I should still be registered as self-employed as I never said that I've stopped! 

[Deleted User]

starray said:

20 years ago I registered as self-employed. Is there a difference between registering as self-employed, and registering as self-employed for national insurance purposes? Is there a separate form or something?  I mean - I have a UTR and a National Insurance number and the people on the hotline were able to tell me how much I owed exactly on the payable gaps so surely I must be registered? 

You would have been required to register as self-employed and also for class 2 NI. Did you pay Class 2 separately throughout? 

See this table, for example.

https://taxaid.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/National-Insurance-Contributions.pdf

The NIC which appeared on your tax calculation was solely Class IV NIC for many years (can’t remember when Class II first appeared). Class IV does not add to your qualifying years for state pension.

starray

Thanks for your replies.  I'm quite confused!  My profits through the years on self-employment have always been less than £6725 a year.  I have never paid anything except once or twice when my self-assessment calculation said to pay a couple of hundred pounds - I think that was a voluntary contribution, but I never received any acknowledgment for that. 
 

[Deleted User]

starray said:

Thanks for your replies.  I'm quite confused!  My profits through the years on self-employment have always been less than £6725 a year.  I have never paid anything except once or twice when my self-assessment calculation said to pay a couple of hundred pounds - I think that was a voluntary contribution, but I never received any acknowledgment for that. 
 

As I said, for many years Class 2 was paid separately out of one’s bank account and did not form part of the calculation. That limit was considerably lower as can be seen from the table which I attached - £4345 in 2005/06 for example when the weekly contribution was £2.10 p.w.

starray

I mean- do I have to formally inform National Insurance what Class I am? I would have thought that they would categorize you according to your earnings automatically?

[Deleted User]

starray said:

I mean- do I have to formally inform National Insurance what Class I am? I would have thought that they would categorize you according to your earnings automatically?

No! As I said, you registered for self-employment. You also had to register for Class 2 NIC, even to indicate that you were exempt. It appears that the second process didn’t happen. There was no link between HMRC and the separate branch for NIC at the time! 

starray

Spoke to someone at tax office and they have helped sort it out - some sort of computer/system error!