Mind the gaps! Pension top-up time extended

THE Government has extended the deadline for paying voluntary National Insurance (NJ) contributions to top up state pension entitlement to 2025.

- Harvey Jones

This is the second time the deadline has been extended as HMRC helplines were swamped with more than half a million callers requesting help, over 10 times the usual number.

In March the original April 5 deadline was extended until July 31, now it has been extended all the way to April 5, 2025.

Everyone needs 35 years of qualifying NI contributions to get the full new state pension, introduced from 2016.

While most will do this automatically from taxation on their earnings, many end up with gaps and get less state pension.

At the moment, they can plug these gaps by making voluntary contributions going back to April 2006, but this was due to be cut to gaps in the last six years.

That triggered a rush to check eligibility, with call waiting times at 90 minutes and many cut off before getting a reply.