I hope you can help with this. It's in regard to National Insurance credits for Working Tax Credits.

I asked for a reconsideration 14 months ago on a decision by HMRC. It says I did not make a claim for Working Tax Credits. I did, but the money was paid to my wife's account.

My pension is £625 per month and I am 73 years old. I would like a reconsideration on my decision before I die. Sort of joking... hopefully you can sort it.

Steve Webb replies: It is quite shocking that, at 73 years of age, you are still trying to sort out your National Insurance record.

But it is great that you have persevered, as you will now be getting an increased state pension and arrears likely to be over £2,000 as a lump sum.

And your experiences are a reminder to everyone, regardless of age, to check their NI record and make sure it makes sense.

The background to this issue is the system which allowed certain people in receipt of Working Tax Credit to get National Insurance 'credits' towards their state pension.

With Universal Credit, which has taken over from WTC, both members of a couple can get NI credits. 

But only one member of a couple on WTC could get the NI credit.

Although you filled in the claim form, the rules say that it is the person into whose bank account the money is paid who is treated as the claimant and who therefore gets the NI credit.

As you say, in your case you put your wife's account details, but there was no indication that I can see on the claim form to explain the consequences of doing this.

You have explained to me that your wife was the higher earner and paid enough NI each year to get a full qualifying year for her pension without the NI credit.

But you were the lower earner, with low income self-employment and you would have benefited from the credit.

I contacted HMRC on your behalf, and it apologised for the fact that although you contacted it in December 2024 about this matter, it had not acted on it.

HMRC has paid you £150 by way of apology and have now (finally) undertaken the review.

The outcome of this is that it has awarded you one extra year of NI credits.

This will add 1/35 of the full state pension rate to your pension, which is around £358 per year at 2026/27 rates. I think the Department for Work and Pensions should also pay arrears back to when you retired which should be a lump sum of well over £2,000.

However, HMRC has not awarded you the NI credits for the whole period that you were on WTC.

Even if you had put your own bank details on the form, it has said that other than for 2016/17, you would not have been eligible. This is for three reasons.

1. For the period from 2011 to 2015 you were self-employed on a low income. If you had wished, you could have applied for something called a small earnings exception, which would have meant no NICs needed to be paid. 

Prior to 6 April 2015, NI credits for the self-employed were only paid to people with a small earnings exception so you would not have qualified.

2. In 2015/16, when the rules changed for self-employed National Insurance, your income from self-employment was above the 'Small Profits Threshold'. This meant your income was too high to qualify for an NI credit under the rules at the time.

3. You reached state pension age during 2017/18 and the year in which you attain state pension age cannot be a qualifying year for your pension.

This leaves us with 2016/17 when none of these problems arose and when your wife was already over state pension age and could not therefore benefit from the NI credit. HMRC has now awarded you with credits for this year.

When telling me the outcome of its reassessment, an HMRC spokesman said: 'We've apologised to your reader and, having reviewed his case, awarded him National Insurance credits for the 2016/17 tax year.'

There's obviously a lot of detail here about the complexities of the rules for NI credits for self-employed people on a low income, and in connection with a benefit that no longer exists.

But the wider point is this. Once again, we have a situation where an NI record was incorrect and by diligently checking you were able to improve your state pension position.

I would encourage all readers to check their NI record. If there are gaps that you do not understand, get in touch with HMRC to make sure that everything is in order.