This Sunday is the deadline for the option enabling workers to top up their UK pension on the cheap.<\/p>\n
It means people who worked in the UK for three years can cheaply improve their state pension to bring them up to 10 years of cover, the minimum to qualify for a UK state pension.<\/p>\n
People need to apply by tomorrow because the UK tax body, HMRC, will be closed over the weekend.<\/p>\n
More than 250,000 Irish people are thought to be eligible for the pension top-up and thousands are already understood to have applied.<\/p>\n
Some of these were able to buy back up to 18 years of pension contributions, before that 18-year option was shut off.<\/p>\n
Financial experts said many people eligible to buy back years were only now applying for it.<\/p>\n
Irish people who worked in the UK for just a few years can now top up as many as 10 years of their British state pension.<\/p>\n
After Sunday, the British government will close a loophole that allows people with fewer than 10 years of contributions to boost their state pension en\u00adtitlement at a lower rate.<\/p>\n
The opportunity to top up a UK pension has been described as \u2018an insanely generous\u2019 concession by experts<\/p>\n
From then, it will be five times more expensive for people living outside the UK to top up their UK state pension, even if they worked there for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands of Irish people worked in the UK and paid the equivalent of our social insurance there, giving them access to a pension. It is called national insurance (NI) in the UK.<\/p>\n
The opportunity to top up a UK pension has been described as \u201can insanely generous\u201d concession by experts.<\/p>\n
Currently, individuals living outside the UK who worked there for between one and 10 years can increase their UK pension entitlement by paying voluntary national insurance contributions at the cheap Class 2 rate.<\/p>\n
After April 5, only people who worked in the UK for 10-plus years will be elig\u00adible to get or top up a UK state pension, according to XtraPension operations director John Ring.<\/p>\n
Former UK workers can secure a UK pension that is paid from age 67, with no impact on their other pensions.<\/p>\n
From Monday, it will be more expensive for Irish people to buy additional national insurance.<\/p>\n
Until the deadline, people who worked in the UK and who are still working can buy Class 2 national insurance contributions, which cost \u00a3182 (\u20ac209) for every year they are buying.<\/p>\n
Others have to pay \u00a3907.40 (\u20ac1,042) for Class 3 contributions. From Monday, Irish people and other nationalities will be able to buy only Class 3 contributions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This Sunday is the deadline for the option enabling workers to top up their UK pension on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,3361,176,61,60,3362,174,175],"class_list":{"0":"post-377976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-charlie-weston","10":"tag-finance","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-money-experts","14":"tag-personal-finance","15":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}