Paid Voluntary NI contribution - Pension Forecast online has still not been updated?

Re. "We currently are not accepting cheque payments." I wonder what will happen to the cheque I have sent? Will it be returned to me, or destroyed? I might leave it a few more weeks and see if it gets cashed. If not, I suppose my only option would be to get the bank to stop the cheque.

Hi Jim Galloway,

As we are still in the process of returning to the office this guidance has not yet been reviewed. Once it has been, gov.uk will be updated accordingly,

Pay voluntary Class 3 National Insurance

Thank you.

 

Hi Ed48,

If you have sent a cheque for Class 3 voluntary NIC this will be processed.

However, as you can appreciate we are still in a transition period of staff returning to work in HMRC offices so at this moment in time we would not be able to give a definitive timescale as to when it would be processed.

If your payment is time sensitive and needs to go on the account quickly it may be quicker to cancel the cheque and choose an alternative method of payment.  

Thank you.

I thought I'd post my experience here in case it's useful to anyone ... my "Voluntary Class 3" payment (made on 13/1/2022) was credited to my NI record today (24/2/2022), so it took 6 weeks.

Hi HMRC Admin 19, Thank you for responding. My payment isn't time sensitive, so I'm happy to wait for the cheque to be processed. Kind regards, Ed48

I paid in over £5,500 to HMRC to top up my wife’s NI Contributions record from 28 years to 35 years by faster payment on 2nd March 2022. I used the 18 digit reference they provided by HMRC to enable them to credit this payment to my wife’s account. It would have thought that having spoken with them and confirmed the amounts and years to which this related to in order to get the 18 digit reference, allocation should be fairly straightforward. However I have just checked online and this has not credited this sum to her account. Please can you let me know what the current waiting time is for allocating this payment to her account? How can I confirm that it has been received safely and if there is anything I can do to help speed up this process?

Hi,
 

This is something you will need to take up with the National Insurance teeam. They can be contacted here : National Insurance: general enquiries    . Thank you.

I paid in over £2057.40 to HMRC to top up my NI Contributions record to reach the maximum state pension by faster payment on 28th February 2022. I used the 18 digit reference provided by HMRC to enable them to credit this payment to my account. I have just checked online and this has not credited to my account (yet) . Please can you let me know what the current waiting time is for allocating this payment to account? How can I confirm that it has been received safely and if there is anything I can do to help speed up this process?

Sorry, just checked the bank transfer was taken on 14th February 2022, so I'm guessing that a phone call next week might be good idea?

Hi Steve J. I paid £4,000 to top my wife’s NI record up to 35 years, also using the 18 digit reference. It took 3 chasing phone calls to HMRC before it was finally credited to her NI records after a total of 11 weeks. Then another call to the Pensions Office on 0800 731 0469 (Select Option for Change of Circumstances if your wife has already started receiving pension payments) so they can adjust the monthly pension amount.

Hi David Kennington,

Thank you for making a payment of Voluntary Class2 National Insurance contributions for State Pension purposes, it is currently taking 6 to 7 weeks for the payment to be allocated to the National Insurance record.

If you cannot see the payment after this time please call the NI Helpline on 03002003500, the NI Agent will take the details of the tax years you are making the payment for and allocate this to your record.

If you have paid via online/telephone banking this is the equivalent of a receipt for payment to HMRC.

At the moment, we are unable to speed up the allocation process but this is currently under review for a quicker resolution for allocation once payment has been made.

Thank you.
 

Good morning I paid over £2000 almost 3 months ago to make up 3 incomplete years. It still wasn't showing up in my NI record this morning when I checked, so I rang up the NI Helpline (in previous post) to find out what was happening. I was told that they'd received the payment but it hadn't yet been allocated to the 3 years in question. The very helpful lady said she didn't know why it hadn't yet been allocated and that she would do it now. I then asked if the increase in my pension payments would be backdated to when I made the payment on 2 February, but was told - no - it would only take effect from when the years are allocated, i.e. today 21 April. Is this right? Have I lost these three months of additional pension? Thank you.

My wife made a payment for missing years on 14th January 2022 and still nothing has been posted. So the above post saying 6 to 7 weeks seems way off. I don't mind the delay and understand that staff are under a lot of work. However, it would be helpful if we were told what the actual delay period is - clearly not 6 to 7 weeks.

When we paid in March we were told to wait 6 weeks and then call the NI team to see what is happening. Surprisingly both my and my wife's payments have already cleared through and are shown on the NI record and pension forecast within about 4 weeks. If has been more than 6 weeks, I would call the NI team for an update.

Hi SteveDB,

Sorry, you may have been provided with incorrect information depending on your circumstances.

From the wording of your query, we are assuming you are already in receipt of your state pension. No matter how long it takes HMRC to allocate the funds to your National Insurance record, HMRC will advise the pension service of the date we received the payment. This ensures that your pension is backdated to the date the payment was received. 

If, however, you have not yet started to claim your state pension, the payment will only increase your pension from the date you reach state pension age. 

If you are concerned your account may not have been updated correctly and your pension fully backdated, we would advise you to contact the National Insurance Helpline.

National Insurance: general enquiries

Thank you.
 

Paid 2 years contributions on 28th March 2022, still waiting for acknowledgement 14 weeks later.

If you do a bank transfer to 'HMRC NIC Receipts' (20-20-48, 30944793) with the correct reference ('NINOICSURNAMEINITIAL'), does is automatically get allocated to your NI contributions? IE. does it happen immediately, or is it a manual process which takes a while? I'm wondering how long to wait, after doing a bank transfer, to call the NI Helpline. Thanks.

Hi Ed48

This is a manual process that can take up to 6 weeks to be updated on our systems.
You may need to allow a further 72 hrs for this update to show on PTA.
Please see link below for contact numbers if you need to check your account.

Tax credits: general enquiries 

Thank you.

I don't know why my previous post was not allowed by the moderators. I was only trying to provide helpful pointers for other people making voluntary payments. Hopefully, they will allow this one. Here is what I did: 1) I transferred my payment by bank transfer 2) then a few days later sent a covering letter, stating which years to allocate the payment to It took just over 3 weeks for this to be reflected in my on-line pension forecast.

Hello, I made a payment of Class 3 voluntary National Insurance through ‘Pay Online’ method on 30th of August 2022. After payment, I received an email from HMRC Online Payments to confirm that I have sent a payment to HMRC, and also states that the payment will take 3 to 5 days to show in my online tax account. It has already been 5 days, however, there is no update on my National Insurance record. Could you please tell me how long it takes to process my payment and update the record? Many thanks