Improve your state pension
If you have gaps in your NICs payment record, you may not receive the full state retirement pension. You can easily check your NICs record for your entire working life in your personal tax account on gov.uk (www.gov.uk/personal-tax-account).
You need at least 35 complete NICs years to receive the maximum state retirement pension, and at least 10 completed NICs years to receive any of the state retirement pension. This can come as a shock when you reach state retirement age, but by that time it is often too late to fill the gaps.
If your NICs record is not complete, do investigate the reason for the apparently missing contributions. You should ask HMRC to check for NICs credits due to you for periods when you were not working but were claiming benefits, including child benefit.
We can help you with this. NICs credits should have been given automatically for these periods.
Where there is a genuine gap in your NICs record, you can normally pay voluntary contributions to fill in the missing weeks for periods in the last six tax years.
However, currently there is a special dispensation that allows women born after 5 April 1953 and men born after 5 April 1951 to complete gaps in their NICs records right back to 6 April 2006. You can pay the voluntary NICs at the 2022/23 rate of £15.85 per week instead of the current rate of £17.45 per week.
This opportunity to make up these old years with voluntary NICs payments was due to close on 31 July 2023. On 12 June this was extended to 5 April 2025.
