Voluntary NIC Contributions for a Low Paid Person?

[98elise]

For the past 4 years my wife has worked part time at a Nursery (Earning 7-8k) so does not earn enough to pay Income Tax or NIC through her employer. She also has a property which is rented out which produces taxable profit of 6-7k. Tax is therefore paid via Self Assessment (thats the easy bit!)

We recently checked her State Pension record as she wants to pay voluntary contributions. The HMRC site gives her the amounts to pay, but they seem wrong. As I understand it income from property does not count towards the NIC calculations, so how are the figures arrived at?

I've put the figures through an online calculator and in some cases the voluntary contribution is higher than NIC would be if the total was from her employer (ie including the Property Income as if it was PAYE). That seems odd?

[bladerrw]

She only has to earn £5,876 pa in 2017/18 to accrue NI benefits as long as the employer is reporting the earnings.

[Jockman]

Yes, her current level is sufficient for NI credits - it is above LEL but below PT - so not sure voluntary contributions are required.

[98elise]

I should have been clearer! She wants to pay the voluntary contributions from the previous 4 years.

In those years her PAYE employment was not high enough to trigger NI. On the State Pensions website it shows a voluntary NI figure she can pay to get a pension credit for each year.

The figures look high so I wondered how the calculation is done.

[S9JTO]

I recommend asking this question on the HMRC live chat functionality.

[200Plus Club]

we are just in the process of completing this with HMRC, its taken 3 months as they lost the cheque and letter twice.
theyve finally acknowledged the new cheque and cashed it, however we havent as yet received a letter stating the actual years we paid are now full. Wife put near £6k into it as she was missing a substantial number of years.