The Lemon Fool

Is it measured as an amount? a number of months payments?
In process of resigning, have one more year's NI contributions to get to full SP entitlement, and wondering if my notice period will cover this

TUK020 wrote:Is it measured as an amount? a number of months payments?
In process of resigning, have one more year's NI contributions to get to full SP entitlement, and wondering if my notice period will cover this

I looked this up yesterday for my own purposes and found that the threshold for 2021/22 is a gross earnings figure of £6,240.

Source : https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savin ... -pensions/

HTH,

Watis

If you have earned less than £6240, you will only have partial contributions, and that year does not qualify for a pension. To make a year qualifying you need to top it up to around £800. The threshold varies for each year, as does the top-up, as both are affected by inflation. The number of years you can topup on was about 6, then grew during the transition to the new State Pension, and may shrink again. For someone retiring now its about 10.

If you visit the government website you can get your NI record with contributions and required top-up for all years, and which ones you can still top-up. The top-up ammount for recent years is fixed for a time bit, so you can hold back.

The helpline will answer direction questions like "how much more pension will I get for completing 19/20", but not "which years should I complete"

See also viewtopic.php?p=402147#p402147, perhaps the helpful helpline has died.

TUK020 wrote:Is it measured as an amount? a number of months payments?
In process of resigning, have one more year's NI contributions to get to full SP entitlement, and wondering if my notice period will cover this

Assuming you always got paid monthly, and only dealing with "certainties"...

The quick and dirty check:
If you have 12 payslips for each month in 2020/21 from the same employer each showing that you have had NI deducted that month, then you have a full year in the bag for 2020/21.

The detailed check:
If you have 12 payslips for each month in 2020/21 from the same employer , each showing that you grossed more than £520 per month, then, again, you have a full year in the bag. (Last year you could earn between £520 and £792 a month and still be treated as having "paid your stamp", even though you would have paid no NI that month)

If you had multiple employers in the year (each paying monthly), then look at each pay period (1 to 12). If you have earned more than £520 per month on at least one payslip for each period, then "the stamp" for that month is definitely paid.

Any other case - come back with details, and someone should be able to clarify your situation.

PochiSoldi

pochisoldi wrote:

TUK020 wrote:Is it measured as an amount? a number of months payments?
In process of resigning, have one more year's NI contributions to get to full SP entitlement, and wondering if my notice period will cover this

Assuming you always got paid monthly, and only dealing with "certainties"...

The quick and dirty check:
If you have 12 payslips for each month in 2020/21 from the same employer each showing that you have had NI deducted that month, then you have a full year in the bag for 2020/21.

The detailed check:
If you have 12 payslips for each month in 2020/21 from the same employer , each showing that you grossed more than £520 per month, then, again, you have a full year in the bag. (Last year you could earn between £520 and £792 a month and still be treated as having "paid your stamp", even though you would have paid no NI that month)

If you had multiple employers in the year (each paying monthly), then look at each pay period (1 to 12). If you have earned more than £520 per month on at least one payslip for each period, then "the stamp" for that month is definitely paid.

Any other case - come back with details, and someone should be able to clarify your situation.

PochiSoldi

Thank you Pochisoldi
For this month, I will have a payslip showing more than £6500 gross. Will this cover me for 2021/22 to be a qualifying year?

The NI and pension world think in terms of weeks, not months or years, so its 52 qualifying weeks in a year entitles you to a weekly pension. This is a very different world to people who are paid monthly, get bonuses and pay-offs and think in terms of annual salaries. But you P45/P60 should have your total NI contributions on, and that going over £800 is key.

If you resign and then "sign on" your NI contributions will then be paid for the next 6 months (or until you find a job.

pompeygazza wrote:If you resign and then "sign on" your NI contributions will then be paid for the next 6 months (or until you find a job.

These days it's pretty impossible to sign on if not seriously looking for a job. They expect you to provide evidence you are spending many hours a day in the process.

Scott.

No it doesn't, just had 6 months off myself, not a single checkup. They don't do the diary thing any more.

I had one phone call at the start to go through my details and the procedure for using their website and then that was it.

pompeygazza wrote:No it doesn't, just had 6 months off myself, not a single checkup. They don't do the diary thing any more.

I had one phone call at the start to go through my details and the procedure for using their website and then that was it.

OK, it's changed since I last did it then - which was a few years ago. At that time there was far more enforcement than there had been earlier in my career.

Scott.

JohnB wrote:The NI and pension world think in terms of weeks, not months or years, so its 52 qualifying weeks in a year entitles you to a weekly pension.

Well, yes and no. Yes, you have to have paid NI on (at minimum) 52 times the lower earnings limit to get a full qualifying year, but you don't have to pay it in 52 weekly installments; it's the amount that counts, not the period. You can do it over any period in the year, so if you earn more than 52 times the lower earnings limit in a week, or a month, or a quarter, etc, it still counts.

In fact I see that .gov itself specifies the LEL in terms of weeks, months and years. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-t ... thresholds

TUK020 wrote:

pochisoldi wrote:

TUK020 wrote:Is it measured as an amount? a number of months payments?
In process of resigning, have one more year's NI contributions to get to full SP entitlement, and wondering if my notice period will cover this

Assuming you always got paid monthly, and only dealing with "certainties"...

The quick and dirty check:
If you have 12 payslips for each month in 2020/21 from the same employer each showing that you have had NI deducted that month, then you have a full year in the bag for 2020/21.

The detailed check:
If you have 12 payslips for each month in 2020/21 from the same employer , each showing that you grossed more than £520 per month, then, again, you have a full year in the bag. (Last year you could earn between £520 and £792 a month and still be treated as having "paid your stamp", even though you would have paid no NI that month)

If you had multiple employers in the year (each paying monthly), then look at each pay period (1 to 12). If you have earned more than £520 per month on at least one payslip for each period, then "the stamp" for that month is definitely paid.

Any other case - come back with details, and someone should be able to clarify your situation.

PochiSoldi

Thank you Pochisoldi
For this month, I will have a payslip showing more than £6500 gross. Will this cover me for 2021/22 to be a qualifying year?

From digging around Google, and I mean really digging around, because 90% of everything technical regarding NI seems to be about paying it, rather than pensions...

The answer quoted is "you have to have paid (or been credited) with NI contributions on earnings equal to 52 times the weekly lower earnings limit."

Translating this into a real scenario means that you need to have earned and paid NI on at least £6240 of pay in the year (as previously quoted).
Any pay on which you didn't pay or get credited, doesn't count towards this limit.

The way to apply this test for a tax year appears to me to be to:

Collect all your payslips for the year (assuming monthly pay)
Put to one side any payslip where you haven't grossed more than £520 (=under the LEL: no NI paid or credited)
For the remaining payslips:
a) Add up the gross pay figures
b) Deduct any amounts (if any) which aren't liable to NI
If the figure comes to more than £6240, then your year is in the bag.

In your case, if you have one single payslip for £6500 gross, then it sounds like you are home and dry.

You might want to check your pension forecast - as of the beginning of 2021/22, the forecast is showing values which are true for the last tax year, but not this one, and don't take into consideration what happened last tax year (nor the 21/22 increases)
Or put another way, my forecast says I need another 5 years between April 6th 2020 and the April 5th before my retirement date.
The reality is that for me, 2020/21 is in the bag, and I actually need to contribute for another 4 years.

PochiSoldi