High income child benefit charge tax question

zagfles

You shouldn't be assuming, the number of years could be anything depending on earnings, nature of workplace pension etc. Check your state pension forecast on above link.

DRS1

I copied this from an old post on the Topping up State Pension subforum (I hope that is OK). It is a bit out of date because 221.20 is no longer the maximum state pension but I think it shows you what you should be looking for - the bit about contributing another X years before your SPA.

As you can see that poster had 30 odd years to go to SPA but only needed another 14 years of full NICs.

So you may not need to pay NICs for all the years between now and your SPA.

Even so you may find that if you have a year now which is only part full (because the child benefit stops mid year) then it may be cheaper to top that up than to wait for a later year.