How long for voluntary NI credits to show?

[98elise]

My wife is short a few years on her NI years, so wants to make some voluntary contributions.

She sent a cheque and all the required information (such as what year to credit) and the cheque was cashed promptly.

It's now been a couple of months but the credits don't show in the government gateway (same number of years missing + projection is the same). She's sent a few letters asking what's happening but hasn't had any response from HMRC at all.

Does it normally take this long, and do letters to HMRC normally go unanswered?

[Aunty Pasty]

We did exactly the same earlier this year. After a couple of months we were getting a little anxious. My wife called them up and gave her details including NI number. Eventually she got through. They confirmed that the paymentl went through and now her NI contributions online have been updated. Maybe you need to make a call to trigger the process to move it along.

[98elise]

Aunty Pasty said:

We did exactly the same earlier this year. After a couple of months we were getting a little anxious. My wife called them up and gave her details including NI number. Eventually she got through. They confirmed that the paymentl went through and now her NI contributions online have been updated. Maybe you need to make a call to trigger the process to move it along.

Not just us then!

We did it in writing as my wife isn't clued up on tax/NI and HMRC really screwed my tax codes last year despite numerous calls (costing me 9k overpaid tax) so I have little faith in their call handlers!

We will try to call them Monday.

[Bobtherallyfan]

Did you get the special 18 digit reference code before you sent the cheque to HMRC? Mine took about two months before it updated on their system.