If you have been living and working abroad, not been in employment for a number of years or only received income by dividends from your own company, it is likely that you have missing years in your national insurance record. The number of years you have contributed will affect the level of your State Pension.
In order to qualify for a full UK State Retirement Pension (SRP) you need to have made National Insurance Contributions (NIC) for 35 years. In order to get any state pension at all you need 10 years of NIC.
Currently, if you are a man born after 5 April 1951 or a woman born after 5 April 1953, you can fill in missing qualifying years for SRP by making voluntary contributions going back to 2006, but from April 2023 you’re only allowed to go back six years.
You can make voluntary contributions to make up the shortfall, however the number of years where you can do this is being reduced from 16 years to 6 years from April 2023.
Each additional year of voluntary contributions costs £824.20, this will entitle you to an extra annual pension of £275.08. If you received the state pension for 20 years, you would get back over £5,000 for a cost of £825.
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