Hi everyone,
I hope this post is in the right place.
There's a summary at the bottom if you don't feel like reading all this :)
I'm hoping someone will be able to give me some advice before I miss the deadline for this:
I moved to the UK from the Netherlands and registered as self-employed in 2010, originally not expecting to stay here for the 10 years it'd take to build up the minimum entitlement for the State Pension, and so I initially got a Small Earnings Exception. My earnings have since exceeded the Small Profits Threshold and I am now paying Class 2 & 4 NICs, but in the first couple of years I paid neither. I now expect that I will be spending more than 10 years working self-employed in the UK, and I realised today that I technically have until Wednesday 5 April 2017 to pay Class 2 NICs for the 2010-2011 tax year.
I called HMRC and was told by the nice lady on the phone that she doesn't think I can just pay it and thinks I instead have to write and explain which years I want to cancel the exception for and the reason etc. before I can pay. She advised against simply paying because she didn't think the payment would be allocated correctly. But she didn't sound sure. She said there was no guidance regarding this.
Naturally I will be writing to HMRC, but of course there's no way I'll hear back from them (which would be by letter also) in time for the 5 April deadline.
So now I'm thinking... Class 2 NICs are now paid through Self-Assessment, right? What if I just paid, e.g., £124.80 (applicable rate for 2010/2011) into my Self-Assessment account and wrote the letter asking them to apply that payment as voluntary Class 2 NICs for 2010/2011? Could this satisfy the deadline?
Tl;dr: Does anyone here have experience paying Class 2 NICs for previous years? Did you just get asked to pay them into your Self-Assessment account?
Many thanks,
Rene
