kman Posted July 19, 2002 Report Share Posted July 19, 2002 I?ve been working overseas now for close to 15 years and during this time I haven?t bothered keeping up with my National Insurance contributions. From what I can gather I can pay up to 6 years back dated contributions, about £400pa or so, but is it worth it ?? I?m pretty certain that even if I pay for as many years as allowed I will receive a reduced pension anyway, but I don?t know by how much. Any advice / info from members in the finance business would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. K. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 21, 2002 Report Share Posted July 21, 2002 If you have missed 15 years contributions you will be unable to gain a full UK Retirement Pension. It may however be worth your while paying the backdated contributions to increase your entitlement. A mans working life for retirement pension (RP) purposes is 49 years from his 16th to 65th birthday. To gain a full RP you need to have 44 qualifying years. If you have less than 44 qualifying years your entitlement is calculated as follows:- qualifying years / requisite years multiplied by 100 and rounded up to the nearest percentage point. 11 qualifying years = 25% (minimum < 11 years no entitlement) 22 qualifying years = 50 % etc. Roughly speaking each extra qualifying year increases you entitlement by about 2.3 % of the standard rate per week. It will take you around five years of pension payments to recoup your "investment" of arrears of contributions. Life expectancy now averages about 75 years so it could well be worth your while. If you are married your wife (even if she is Thai) can claim a pension based on your contribution record of 60% of your entitlement which means your payback period is again reduced. You can get a pension forcast along with a summary of your retirement pension entitlement (current and prospective) by writing to the contributions agency, Newcastle, England NE98 1YX. There is one office in the UK that deals with all National Insurance details of expats - I worked there for three years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thai3 Posted July 22, 2002 Report Share Posted July 22, 2002 Interesting post I will write to them as well. But when you say: ' A mans working life for retirement pension (RP) purposes is 49 years from his 16th to 65th birthday. To gain a full RP you need to have 44 qualifying years.' Does this mean working years or contribution years. Do years out of work when signing on count, or does this this mean you will get a lesser pension. You say a person needs 44 qualifying years, so a person can miss a total of 5 years (college etc) without it affecting the pension.I expect thailand is one of those countries where the pension is never increased, in that case would it better to give them a UK address, or would that be a crime?-peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 22, 2002 Report Share Posted July 22, 2002 Hi, Qualifying years are those in which you have actually paid or been credited with National Insurance contributions. Your are automatically credited with National Insurance contributions for those tax years which include your 16th 17th and 18th birthdays and for periods of unemployment for which you have signed on. You are also automatically credited with contributions for the tax years including your 60th - 64th birthdays provided you have spent at least 183 days of that tax year in the UK. Thailand is indeed one of those countries where the UK RP is not uprated annually. It is illegal to claim you are in the UK when yopu are resident abroad but the chances of getting caught are miniscule. Open a bank account in the UK and have your pension paid in and withdraw it via ATM over here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kman Posted July 23, 2002 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2002 Thanks for the detailed responses. With the formula you advise they use it certainly seems worthwhile paying back dated contributions. One more question for you .. You say that .. --------------------------------------------------- If you are married your wife (even if she is Thai) can claim a pension based on your contribution record of 60% of your entitlement which means your payback period is again reduced. ------------------------------------------------------------- Does she have to have UK citizenship to receive this ?? Thanks K. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 23, 2002 Report Share Posted July 23, 2002 Hi Your wife does not have to be a UK citizen to claim a pension based on your contribution record. As long as you are legally married she can claim it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 23, 2002 Report Share Posted July 23, 2002 I seem to remember reading somewhere that the age of your spouse makes a difference as to what you will collect. ie if she is not of pensionable age you get screwed by the system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 23, 2002 Report Share Posted July 23, 2002 Yes, both you and your wife have to have reached retirement age before she can claim a pension based on your contributions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bembaman Posted July 27, 2002 Report Share Posted July 27, 2002 A couple of points: If you pay your arrears (or the 6 years allowed anyway) you will then have to decide if you wish to declare you are abroad or not. If you do not you may get questions as to why you did not contribute for the missing years yet were not running a business in UK nor apparently on PAYE either. I don't know. I was fully paid up when I moved to LOS so I cannot help on this point and I am not sure if they care or not why you did not keep up to date. The situatiuon if you declare you are abroad is that you have to apply for a 'voluntary contributions scheme'. Be very careful here as I had a long chat off the record with NI at Newcastle. You are NOT entitled as of right to have a voluntary scheme set up so you can carry on contributions-it is discretionary by the NI, a little publicised point for obvious reasons. I was told to say that I intended to return to the UK in '3 or 4 years' but that I could not be absolutely certain. I did this and it sailed through no problem. My guess is that there is an unofficial government policy to reduce pension burdens by squeezing out those people who clearly have no intention of returning to the UK. Another little quirk is that for some stupid petty reason, assuming your application is approved, whilst you will get the pension upon reaching retirement age, you will not be able to benefit from further pension increases from then on. ie it is pegged at the rate in place on your 65th birthday. That is how it was put to me. Go to the inland revenue website and go from there-it is very informative and you can download forms etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stumpy Posted August 9, 2002 Report Share Posted August 9, 2002 Hi Blackcat, I hope this doesn't appear to be a stupid question but in the case of a person who has no entitlement to a pension does the state actually refuse to pay out the old age pension? The person being a UK resident but not having enough qualifying years? Cheers, Stump_Dog. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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