National Insurance Voluntary Contributions

by **arobertson** on Wed Apr 01, 2009 6:12 am

My wife has recently joined me overseas (taking a 2 year sabbatacal from her Teaching post in UK last August 08) I am 57 and I approach early retirement sometime next year however my wife who is 56 intends to resume her Teaching post in 2010.I have paid 37 years National Insurance contributions which includes Class 3 contributions from time to time when I have worked overseas and have ceased paying Class 3 contributions.My wife on the other hand prior to us meeting year 2000 has missing years of National Insurance from time to time whilst rasing family.I am aware that the cost of NI Voluntary contributions is about to increase on 5th April and wondered what would be the quickest way for my wife to investigate , discuss with who ? and consider quickly wether to pay the back years or not before the 5th April 09? I am overseas currently approaching home leave and my wife is home in UK.

by **pawncob** on Fri Apr 03, 2009 6:12 pm

Firstly you need a pension forecast from the Pensions office, which takes 3-5 weeks. Only then can you make a decision.

by **princyjoshu** on Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:45 pm

thanks for sharing

by **etf** on Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:43 pm

Two additional points which may merit consideration/further investigation (just noticed that this post is six months old, but I'll send it anyway).

a) generally speaking an expatriate employee should consider paying class 2 voluntary individual contributions, rather than class 3 contributions as they are cheaper.

b) payment of class 2 contributions (rather than class 3) is particularly important in the last 2 UK tax years before an individual returns to the UK, because it provides an entitlement to additional short term benefits when the individual is resident in the UK which are not provided by class 3 e.g. incapacity benefit (I recall playing golf with someone who had suffered a heart attack in the Middle East and had returned to the UK to be told he was not entitled to claim cetain benefits despite paying class 3 voluntary contributions).

Hope this helps!

The Expatriate Tax Factory (ETF)

http://sites.google.com/site/theexpatriatetaxfactory/