Voluntary NIC Contributions

[P055UM 281]

Possibly a long shot given the sparsity of results when searching this topic on VJ - but is anybody here making voluntary NICs to HMRC?

 

Keen to do so but Form NI38 is a bit confusing - the "Ordinarily Resident" question in particular seems counterintuitive.

 

Would be interested if anybody is doing this and how they went about filling out this form.

 

Cheers!

[Wuozopo 4,293]

On 7/27/2022 at 11:53 AM, AW1704 said:

Possibly a long shot given the sparsity of results when searching this topic on VJ - but is anybody here making voluntary NICs to HMRC?

 

Keen to do so but Form NI38 is a bit confusing - the "Ordinarily Resident" question in particular seems counterintuitive.

 

Would be interested if anybody is doing this and how they went about filling out this form.

 

Cheers!

This has been discussed a number of times on this forum or Visa Journey through the years. I can’t come up with anything so perhaps searches going back years don’t work so well. One person I remember was pretty knowledgeable but I can’t remember the name. I think he lived in west Houston. 
 

How many years do you have paid in? Will you have a fairly long career in the US accruing Social Security?

[P055UM 281]

16 minutes ago, Wuozopo said:

This has been discussed a number of times on this forum or Visa Journey through the years. I can’t come up with anything so perhaps searches going back years don’t work so well. One person I remember was pretty knowledgeable but I can’t remember the name. I think he lived in west Houston. 
 

How many years do you have paid in? Will you have a fairly long career in the US accruing Social Security?

Thanks for your reply! I was hoping you’d be along at some point.

 

I have 14 years at the moment and could expensively top up another two. I guess I plan on being in the US indefinitely so it makes sense to try and get these voluntary contributions squared away. I guess I have probably 15 years or so to get it right 😂

 

Current plan is to send the form off with it filled out as best I can and see what happens. Hopefully it’ll be right, or they’ll write to tell me what was wrong about it 😀

Edited July 29, 2022 by AW1704

[Wuozopo 4,293]

48 minutes ago, AW1704 said:

Thanks for your reply! I was hoping you’d be along at some point.

 

I have 14 years at the moment and could expensively top up another two. I guess I plan on being in the US indefinitely so it makes sense to try and get these voluntary contributions squared away. I guess I have probably 15 years or so to get it right 😂

 

Current plan is to send the form off with it filled out as best I can and see what happens. Hopefully it’ll be right, or they’ll write to tell me what was wrong about it 😀

 I did not do contributions because I already had my full 30+ years in before immigrating. Do you know you can’t collect full Social Security and full state pension because they are both government pensions. For the life of me, I still don’t fully understand it and I’ve even talked to Social Security about it. Social Security will be reduced by what you collect from UK. Go to SSA.gov and search for WEP.  I believe you can also get credit for your UK number of years as SSA years when you are middle-ish like you and wouldn’t get 30 or so years in either country to collect a higher amount. For people with a long U.S. career and a high salary ahead of them, they will do better (I think) just collecting SS which is based on earnings, not everybody gets the same amount.like UK. That would be those who have maybe 2 years in NI and are considering paying in 28 years. 
 

The guy who was going to make contributions seemed to think it was very cheap and talked with great knowledge about how it would work with his Social Security and would still allow him to collect some, even with the WEP. My social security retirement would be minimal because I have been mostly retired in the US and have contributed little. but I am eligible for the full UK state pension. Forty quarters (10 years) paid into Social Security will make me eligible for Medicare health insurance at age 65.

 

Sorry for rambling and not being able to find you any threads.  Can you call HMRC and ask for assistance with the form? When I was struggling with the P85, leaving UK form, a nice lady walked me through it.

[P055UM 281]

54 minutes ago, Wuozopo said:

 I did not do contributions because I already had my full 30+ years in before immigrating. Do you know you can’t collect full Social Security and full state pension because they are both government pensions. For the life of me, I still don’t fully understand it and I’ve even talked to Social Security about it. Social Security will be reduced by what you collect from UK. Go to SSA.gov and search for WEP.  I believe you can also get credit for your UK number of years as SSA years when you are middle-ish like you and wouldn’t get 30 or so years in either country to collect a higher amount. For people with a long U.S. career and a high salary ahead of them, they will do better (I think) just collecting SS which is based on earnings, not everybody gets the same amount.like UK. That would be those who have maybe 2 years in NI and are considering paying in 28 years. 
 

The guy who was going to make contributions seemed to think it was very cheap and talked with great knowledge about how it would work with his Social Security and would still allow him to collect some, even with the WEP. My social security retirement would be minimal because I have been mostly retired in the US and have contributed little. but I am eligible for the full UK state pension. Forty quarters (10 years) paid into Social Security will make me eligible for Medicare health insurance at age 65.

 

Sorry for rambling and not being able to find you any threads.  Can you call HMRC and ask for assistance with the form? When I was struggling with the P85, leaving UK form, a nice lady walked me through it.

Thank you for your ramblings, honestly. I find this really insightful and it is prompting me to at least do some more research into the topic.
 

It seems possibly that the WEP is only relevant if you work less than 30 years in the US, since I am 32 at present, if I stayed here forever I guess I would end up hitting over 30 years of SS contributions (sigh). In this case, it seems perhaps I *could* claim both pensions (at least that is my interpretation of the below link) - perhaps that is what this guy was taking about? I can at least confirm voluntary NIs are very cheap if you are employed abroad - something like £3.15 per week. 
 

https://www.hudsonvalley360.com/opinion/columnists/social-security-matters-will-my-uk-pension-affect-my-us-social-security/article_5cadfde5-7b46-5886-9faf-5f276eebabe3.html

 

More reading definitely required on my part, now I know how to spend some of my last week in K1 purgatory before starting my first job here 😀

 

Thanks again for your valuable insights!!

[Wuozopo 4,293]

On 7/28/2022 at 10:15 PM, AW1704 said:

t seems possibly that the WEP is only relevant if you work less than 30 years in the US, since I am 32 at present, if I stayed here forever I guess I would end up hitting over 30 years of SS contributions (sigh). In this case, it seems perhaps I *could* claim both pensions (at least that is my interpretation of the below link) - perhaps that is what this guy was taking about? I can at least confirm voluntary NIs are very cheap if you are employed abroad - something like £3.15 per week. 

That current page on WEP is certainly more informative than the last I read so thanks for that latest version. I never saw those charts before. Looks like my small social security earnings will be reduced by half. 
 

Currently new state pension max is £9627.80 or $11.721.85 per yr for everybody
Whereas max SS at full retirement age is $40,140.00 per yr for a high wage earner which is why I tend to think SS is the better deal for many with professional careers. It’s $28,362 if you take it at age 62. 

And of course amounts will all change along with exchange rates for $/£ over the years….or go away even.😮

Most retired professionals my wife knows start SS at age 62 because they have full company pensions which cost them no contributions plus a goodly amount in IRA accounts. For most your age, companies have dropped pensions and encourage 401Ks with company matching schemes. And there are those like her first husband who retired early with a full company paid pension and didn’t live to age 62 to collect his Social Security. 

 

It’s all rather a guess isn’t it? 

[P055UM 281]

30 minutes ago, Wuozopo said:

It’s all rather a guess isn’t it? 

Hahaha you can say that again! There are so many moving parts to come in the future. I guess all one can really do is take action which makes sense based on the information one has at the time, and trust that it'll be okay in the long term.

 

But yes, I agree with you that in the bigger picture taking SS makes sense for those with professional careers ahead of them.

 

It is interesting learning about this stuff, and it does make me think that when you move to a different country there is so much stuff that you'd taken for granted at home that you now need to figure out for yourself or, of course, with the help of great communities such as this one; I can't quite fathom how anybody got their heads around this stuff before the internet was so widespread.

[Wuozopo 4,293]

3 hours ago, AW1704 said:

; I can't quite fathom how anybody got their heads around this stuff before the internet was so widespread.

I think we were just dumber then. Or maybe we learned different skills like using a phone book and road maps or phones with dials. One of our VJ young friends got stuck in an elevator with a dial phone to call for help. She had no idea how to use it and just screamed instead. 😂 😂 

. My wife is really good at taxes because for years she had to use a printed instruction book and scratch pad, pencil, and eraser to do the maths and fill in a draft. Then you copied onto a final sheet with ink. It was before hand-heldcalculators when she started. TurboTax now is a time-saver just popping everything where it goes, but she has a really good concept of how it all works by having to do it manually and reading IRS instructions. I think a lot of people today just guess answers when they don’t know what any of the multiple choices mean.

[P055UM 281]

5 hours ago, Wuozopo said:

One of our VJ young friends got stuck in an elevator with a dial phone to call for help. She had no idea how to use it and just screamed instead. 😂 😂 

That is very funny 😂

 

5 hours ago, Wuozopo said:

I think a lot of people today just guess answers when they don’t know what any of the multiple choices mean

I think you’re right. My first time doing turbo tax was last year and it is pretty confusing! I regularly ponder why there is the concept of ‘doing taxes’ at the end of the year rather than good ol’ PAYE. Some friends tell me it because of big interests and whatnot and I’m sure there’s some truth in that, but I often also just land on ‘because that’s how it’s always been’.