Yasmin Harper

My husband and I live in France.
We both filled in the necessary form online and subsequently received letters in November (me) and February (him) detailing the years we were eligible to pay for and the amounts.
We called the HMRC NI helpline on 14th March and spoke to someone in turn to advise which years we wanted to pay for, and these were duly noted on our accounts.
We then made separate bank transfers on March 17th for the amounts advised, using the codes as specified in the instructions for overseas payments (our NI number, followed by IC, followed by our surname and initials).
We also sent letters to HMRC on 28th March to re-confirm the amounts and years paid for.
So far nothing has been updated on either of our pension forecasts - they are still saying we need to pay for missing years.
We have paid almost £6000 between us and I am now getting a bit worried about where this money has gone.
I understand that there must have been a much higher than normal volume of payments before the deadline, but how long should we wait?
I have tried using the "Check when you can expect a reply" page, but this doesn't seem to have an option that answers this question.
It seems to be more about correspondence, not making payments. Can someone please advise?

Thanks, but having not previously received a reply from this thread, I already called the helpline who advised me to send a cheque with a covering letter. I luckily managed to find an old UK cheque book, so this is what I have done.

I've lived in France since 2013 and been self-employed here since 2015. I stopped working at my last job in the UK in 2012. I have filled in the CF83 form and received a letter in December with the amounts that I'd need to pay for each year. The first 3 years are Class 3 as I wasn't working during that period. The following 8 years are Class 2 so considerably lower amounts. The amounts are different for each year, although fairly similar for the Class 2 years. I currently have 29 years of contributions from my time working in the UK before moving so need to pay another 6 years to bring it up to 35 years. In the letter there are links to the relevant pages for paying the contributions from abroad, it seems the only option is to pay by bank transfer, quoting your NI number as a reference. My question is, how will HMRC know which years I am paying for? Obviously I would rather pay for 6 of the Class 2 years, but there doesn't seem to be any way to specify. I don't want to make a payment and then find it has all been attributed to just one year of Class 3 instead of 6 years of Class 2! Please can you advise.

I have an online store in France and have been selling to the UK for the last 6 months after registering for VAT. I have put a clear notice on my website that orders must be below £135, or split to create 2 orders if more. A customer has just ignored this and placed a larger order. I was going to cancel it and contact her, bu it just occurred to me that I may be misunderstanding something here. Is the amount of £135 ex-VAT or does it include the VAT? So if a customer were to place an order for £145 including VAT at 20%, plus £10.50 shipping, would that actually be OK, since the amount ex-VAT is under £135?

Thank you Jason for your reply - I think in the end I had come to the conclusion that your explanation must be what is happening. Another person I spoke to here in France who was already registered for VAT in the UK said she found that her address was changed to the Aberdeen address on her reg certificate. Both of us are Brits in France, so if even we find it difficult, I hate to think how others manage! In fact I just had another non-British person ask me for feedback on how to do it all as she can't figure out how to apply for UK VAT at all. Other countries that have a requirement for VAT registration have dedicated web pages for foreign-based e-commerce businesses with step by step instructions, I don't know why HMRC can't do the same, it would make it so much easier for small businesses like us.

Hi again, yes, when someone else mentioned this to me a few days ago I had Googled this office to try and find the address, and the only office in Aberdeen that I could find had closed in 2021. Was going to mention that, but wasn't sure as so many people were saying that Ruby House was the address for NETP's. I can only imagine that as this office has closed, they are now just using people's actual address, but no-one at HMRC seems to know this as they keep saying you should use the default UK postcode on your certificate. It's quite interesting that no-one from HMRC has actually commented on this thread to give any advice....

Customs oldtimer - thanks for your reply. Yes, after much searching and also talking to another business like me, I found that this was the case for them. However, as I said in my post above and as I have now told the HMRC technical team 3 times (who seem unable to grasp what I am saying, despite having sent them a PDF of my reg. certificate 3 times), the Aberdeen address is not on my certificate or anywhere else on my account. It shows only my French address. I am not certain why people keep ignoring what I am saying and just telling me to use the UK postcode on the certificate! Anyway, the matter has now been solved, I had also emailed the EORI team direct who have today responded and sent me my EORI number.

Further to the above, I also emailed the technical team who told me to use the default UK postcode on my VAT certificate. To be clear, there is no default UK postcode on my VAT certificate, only my French address with my French postcode is shown. If there is in fact a default postcode that overseas traders should use, then please advise what it is, thanks.

I have an e-commerce business in France and have now registered for UK VAT in order to be able to sell to customers in the UK. For this I understand that I also need a UK EORI number. I received my VAT number yesterday in the post, and also received an email from the EORI team a couple of weeks ago. This just said that if I wanted to engage in international trade, then I would need to apply for an EORI number and gave the link https://www.gov.uk/eori/apply-for-eori. Despite the fact that I ticked the box to say my business was outside the UK, and that I entered an address in France, and that I gave my VAT number which is registered to this address in France, it then asks me to give the UK postcode that the number is registered to! It won't allow me to leave this box blank or enter my French postcode. Can anyone advise how then I am supposed to get a UK EORI number? Am I missing something? Thanks in advance for any help,