Thousands of Brits were left outraged after attempting to boost their state pension by filling in NI gaps before a ‘crucial’ tax year deadline that has now passed
Thousands of Brits scrambling to boost their state pension before a ‘crucial’ deadline were blocked from doing so due to a major HMRC blunder.
Over the last couple of months, workers across the nation were being urged to check whether it was worth back-paying any gaps in the National Insurance contributions from 2006 to 2016 before the new tax year (April 5, 2025).
As previously reported, gaps in your NI can occur for a slew of reasons, including if you were employed but had low earnings, unemployed but were not claiming benefits, were self-employed but did not pay contributions because of small profits, or due to living or working outside the UK. While those on the old state pension won’t benefit by back paying, it could result in a hefty top-up for those one day claiming the New State Pension.
You need around 35 full NI years to get the maximum State Pension, but there are some exceptions where this could be more. Money-saving guru Martin Lewis, who regularly spoke about how ‘lucrative’ the move could be, has helped swathes of Brits boost their pension through this hack/
For example, one woman paid around £5,000 to increase her State Pension by £2,550 a year. If she lives for 20 years after the qualifying state pension age, she’ll see a boost of £51,000.
Martin Lewis MSE warning to anyone who has moved home since 1993
The deadline for purchasing NI credits between 2006 and 2018 was Saturday at 11.59 pm. But, the thousands of Brits that had left the job until the last day were wrongly denied the opportunity.
According to Martin Lewis’ MSE website, swathes of adults were met with a message stating the deadline had already passed. “I have just tried to purchase NI gaps before the new tax year and the website will not let me buy them,” one person wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “The tax year starts tomorrow so surely I should be able to purchase them today?”
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“The Government had said that as long as you started the process of topping up on or by 5 April – either using its online service or by submitting a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ‘call-back form’ – you’d still be able to purchase NI contributions for the older years in question,” explained MSE. “But HMRC has now confirmed that the online service to make payments for the tax years from 2006/07 to 2020/21 was mistakenly taken offline a day prior to planned.”
Luckily, a spokesperson for HMRC said it will ‘contact anyone affected directly about the payments they wanted to make to ensure they don’t miss out’. Those who visited the body’s online service to make payments from March 13 – April 4 should also have been given a 31-day grace period to pay from the date they had the issue, following reports of other techincal issues leading up to the deadline.
For those only finding out about back-paying their State Pension, you can still purchase NI credits for the past six tax years. You can find out more here.
Were you impacted by the HMRC error? Email [email protected] for a chance to share your story
