alfista1

I need to start paying national insurance contributions to HMRC asap.

I'm employed overseas so what I understand from their website is that I pay Class 2 at only 2.70 a week.
Is this correct? No surprise they have no email, just a phone line.
Bit confusing as the unemployed need to pay more under Class 3??



Class 2 contributions.
People living abroad - employed, self employed, unemployed immediately before leaving the UK
Only if at some point you’ve lived in the UK continuously for 3 years or paid 3 years worth of contributions
Class 2: £2.70 a week

Class 3:
People living abroad and not working in the country they moved to
Only if at some point you’ve lived in the UK continuously for 3 years or paid 3 years worth of contributions
Class 3: £13.55 a week

Thanks

thinbrit

This form should answer all your questions, it also includes the application form to pay from abroad.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pdfs/nico/ni38.pdf
hopefully you have a UK source to pay from. I sent payment from my US checking account, and it cost $40 in fees to send this last years payment.

alfista1

thanks I'll have a look at that.
Luckily I still have my Barclays active. I can transfer money but also it costs me an arm and a leg also. maybe just transfer every couple of years to top it up.

alfista1

Appears I can pay the lower amount Class 2 just to keep my state pension while working and living overseas.

It states if you are employed or self-employed.

Hotscot

Contact them and they'll send you a personalized account of what you need to do.
National Insurance Contributions - International Caseworker Team

Point of contact International Caseworker Team
Phone number 0845 915 4811
Calling from outside the UK
+44 191 225 4811
Opening hours From 8.00 am to 5.00 pm, Monday to Friday

rpjs

Use a service like XE. This thread reminded me to check if my UK account needs a top-up and I just lobbed a couple of hundred bucks over. All it "costed" me is the difference between the rate XE quoted me (about $1.58 to the pound} versus the notional headline rate of about $1.55.

alfista1

thanks mate.
I'll check that out.

Just remembered I set up a gateway account with HMRC many many years ago. have to look through my files to see if I still have the account ID to log in.

alfista1

How do those services like XE work I've always wondered?

Don't you still need to transfer the money from your local account to them?
This will surely incur the same kind of charges won't it?

sir_eccles

I vaguely recall once getting a letter from HMRC suggesting I ought to make NICs but I ignored it at the time. Is there a time limit to do this? To what extent is it worth it?

Apparently there is a six year time limit to pay for tax years in arrears so I may have gaps if I don't hurry up.

The website suggests I may only have 10 years of contributions right now.

ChocolateBabz

Yep hubby pays Class 2 - he is working over here and I pay Class 3 - I am not working over here.

We make sure we have enough cash in our UK account to cover the payments, hubby's comes off monthly and I pay mine online once a year. When our UK balance is running low we top it up with an XE transfer, XE get your bank details here and your bank details there and do the transfer.

thinbrit

You can catchup the last 6 years, I did.

A few words of warning. If you reach pension age after April 2016, your US born spouses will no longer be entitled to a UK pension; you will now need 35 years of contributions for a full pension.
When I took the decision to make voluntary payments I needed 30 years of contributions and my US wife would also get a UK pension, it was a no brainer. I haven't done the math since, but I've already paid 7 years (6 years catchup and this past year). I'm too far in to it for it not to make financial sense - unless they change the rules again before I retire...

rpjs

That will depend on the banks at each end and whether or not they allow the payments / receipts to be made by "ACH/EFT" which is usually free, or require wire transfer, which usually isn't. I believe that wire transfers are faster but I've never needed to use them.

In my case when I book a trade through XE their factor, a company called Custom House, will make an electronic debit from my Chase account in the US to their US account. The money then spends about a week to ten days perambulating its way through the international banking system before turning up in my First Direct account in the UK as an electronic transfer from Custom House's UK account. Neither Chase nor First Direct make any charge and XE / Custom House make their money through the difference in the exchange rate they offer me, vs the rates they get in the money markets, about 2-3 cents on the dollar.

The process in reverse works the same way, except that Custom House can't debit my UK bank account directly - I have to set up a one-time payment to Custom House's UK account with First Direct and then email XE to confirm the reference. Despite those extra steps, it's usually quite faster to transfer from the UK to the US, just a few days usually.

The biggest hassle is setting everything up - to register with XE you have to send them scans of photo ID and proof of address. Also I had to call Chase's anti-fraud department and explain that I knew who XE / Custom House were and considered them to be reputable before they'd allow them to debit my account for my first US -> UK transfer. After that I've been using it every few months to top up my UK account for NI and other bill payments and it's been as easy as pie.

nun

You can do a wire transfer now, but I just send a foreign bank draft. That's a check you can get from a US bank drawn on a UK bank in pounds. It cost me $20 last time I did it. I've been paying Class 2 NI that way for 27 years and now have 30 years of contributions thanks to 3 years I got when I was at sixth form college, but I'll now need to do 5 years more under the new rules. Still I'll be better off as the basic state pension will go from £110 to £144 per week. Even if I stopped paying now I'd get 30/35 x £144 = £123 under the new rules. So for those of us with a lot of Voluntary Class2 NICs the basic state pension is even better value for money. If you live in the US and qualify to get social security remember that the portion of the basis state pension due to voluntary NICs does NOT count towards the Windfall Elimination Program (WEP) making it an even better benefit.

alfista1

I've only got 7 years paid in. I am 37 now so I plan to pay a couple of years in arrears and continue paying until I retire now.
Still enough time to make up the 23 years I'm missing just!

Also got 9 years paid in to my pension here (not in USA - I used this forum as there are a lot of expats on the USA category) so I plan to have the 2 pensions when I'm old and wrinkly.

Who knows maybe we'll go back to the UK in a few years. We do talk about it a lot.

ChocolateBabz

Glad I read this, I didn't know it had gone up to 35 years, oh fart