State Pension Gaps: Check By 5th April 2025
17th February 2025
Have you checked your State Pension gaps?
State pension has changed for those who will reach State Pension age from 6th April 2016. This covers men born on or after 6th April 1951 and women born on or after 6th April 1953 who could be eligible for the new State Pension.
The new State Pension is based on how many qualifying National Insurance tax years an individual has. You need a minimum of 10 qualifying years to be eligible for any state pension and 35 qualifying years to be eligible for full state pension, those between 10 and 35 years will receive an apportioned amount based on their National Insurance Contribution history.
To get a National Insurance qualifying year for your state pension you need to have:
-
- Paid sufficient National Insurance in that tax year.
- Qualified for National Insurance credits in that tax year.
- Paid voluntary National Insurance in that tax year.
Making voluntary National Insurance Contributions
If you do not have the full amount of qualifying National Insurance tax years you may be able to make voluntary National Insurance Contributions to fill in the “gaps” in your National Insurance record, hence increasing your potential State Pension income.
Currently the deadline for making voluntary contributions is 6 years from the end of the tax year in question. So, for the 2023/24 tax year the deadline will be 5th April 2030.
The previous government however extended the voluntary National Insurance Contribution deadline to 5th April 2025 for those affected by the new state pension.
It is currently possible to make voluntary contributions by 5th April 2025 for the tax years from 6th April 2006 to 5th April 2018 per the extension. As well as per the normal rules you can go back 6 years and make voluntary contributions from 6th April 2018 to 5th April 2024.
Check your National Insurance Record:
To check your National Insurance record to see how many qualifying tax years you have you will need to log into your HMRC online account, which can be found in the link below:
https://www.gov.uk/check-national-insurance-record
Get In Touch
If you have any queries regarding your National Insurance qualifying years, please contact your Whitings LLP office with a copy of your National Insurance record.
Disclaimer - All information in this post was correct at time of writing.
