UK National Insurance Payments

*Hi All

My wife and I are early retirees from UK now living in France, my wife has about four years to pay to receive full UK state pension. We have calculated that she has only to live less than four years after reaching pension age to make it pay off.

My questions is can we deduct these payments to the UK HMRC from her Company pension when we declare it to the French Impôt?

Best Regards

Nick

No idea Nick

However I did this this year and I think it is a no brainer of an idea.

The payback, as you said, is minimal

Go for it

Andy

certainly not! This question was asked before and got the same response. There is nothing in the DTT that would permit such an activity.
I found the post here in the Tax 2021 topic.
Certainly get the extra years but don’t expect the French to pay for them!

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I agree with Graham, you can’t deduct it.

I am in process of doing the same - if onky HMRC would reply to tell me precisely how much and which years and give me the blessed 16 digit code to do the transfer!

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Jane,
one can check your NI contributions here: Check your National Insurance record - GOV.UK

The report will tell you which (tax) years you have full/partial/zero contributions, for each partial or zero year the amount needed to pay, and the deadline that payment needs to be made.

I recently did this for my wife, and then phoned HMRC on: ++44 300-200-3500, told them which years we were paying, and then made the payment by bank transfer.
HMRC will advise the their bank details and the reference that you will need to include with the bank transfer.

@Nigel-at-BUF-House If you have had periods of being contracted out it is sadly not as simple as that.

I have done all the obvious things, but there is some weird detail about how paying some years would not contribute to my pension so they need to confirm the precise details. And despite asking I think 6 times now I still do not have my 16 digit reference to pay them. In total I think over last few months I have spent about 4 hours on hold to the various departments.

Oh well It was a good idea in principle.

My wife was also contracted out, we still do not fully understand that. However she has been lucky and got a good lady at the tax office who explained it all, told her there was not point in paying for some years as it would not help her NI record but every year now she gets the amount to pay and she has the code to pay it.

Good luck dealing with UK tax office, I have a good friend who was a tax inspector and he persisted in calling us “customers” that made for some good natured arguments. A customer can go elsewhere, but I suppose we have done that by moving to France.

Best Regards

Nick

@NickTarn Thanks - at least that gives me hope that one day I might find a nice woman on the end of the phone who gives me the ok to give them money!

@Nigel-at-BUF-House Well I thought I’d give your number a go, a lovely helpful person and we had a good chat. However he was unable to confirm which of the missing years would actually contribute to my pension, so I could pay for nothing…

Back to square one…