am i paying too much national insurance?

[unclebumpkin]

You have to pay national insurance is you're self-employed. You also pay ni payments if you're employed by somebody else. You also get NI payments if you're on jobseekers allowance. Can somebody please explain how this all works? Am I just paying too much national insurance? I am unsure whether to stop being registered as self employed at the moment. Or do you just get the money back somehow? Sorry for my ignorance...

Yes you pay (or can pay) NI in all those situations, but you wouldn't be claiming JSA and employed and self-employed all at the same time, so it shouldn't be an issue.

www.gov.uk/national-insurance/overview

re: flowery, no not all 3. but i have been self employed and on jsa. also been employed and self employed.

guess it may be worth staying self-employed just in case i can make use of receipts from the past few years just in case things 'work out' this year. guess once you leave self-employed status they become null and void.

"You’re employed and self-employed
You might be an employee but also do self-employed work. In this case your employer will take care of your Class 1 payments and you have to pay Class 2 and 4 payments for your self-employed work.

How much you pay when employed and self-employed depends on your combined income from all your jobs."
www.gov.uk/national-insurance/national-insurance-contributions-how-much-you-pay

I am employed and self employed. Do very little self employed work, so I get a NI exemption certificate.

CF10 - Exemption to pay class 2 NI

I would love to know what level of NI you have to be paying to qualify for various things, such as state pension. I have a 40 hour a week job at the moment but what happens if that drops in hours... how will I know when it gets to a level that means I won't pay enough NI and need to stop having the NI exemption on the self employed income?

that's a good point - i may as well stay self employed and just out of paying the class 2s if I want to...

advice as to whether to do that? ...

Are you currently employed and earning over 10k a year (april to april)?

I don't know at what amount it makes sense to not pay Class 2 NI on self employed small earnings. Your income from employed work needs to pay a certain amount so you get the credit towards pension, maternity that sort of thing but I don't know how much you need to be earning.

www.gov.uk/state-pension/eligibility
Looks like you need to be earning £153 a week from the employed job.

i imagine i'd either be earning over £153 a week - or i'd be signing on... although when you do sign on, there's sometimes a slight delay, do you lose contributions for that period....

this stuff makes my head hurt...

i assume the hmrc don't just automatically refund you the money then...

I'm mostly self-employed and occasionally do contact work which has class 1 deducted. I can offset the class 1 I pay in a year against my class 4 liability for that year.

do i have until april 5th to claim this money back again? i think i get 2 ni class 2 bills and have just paid one that was sent out in early october to be paid end of january. there was another about 6 months before, i believe.

i had a year a about maybe 7 or 8 years ago when i was on payroll for a company and worked most of that year but there were few months when i wasn't there but was paying NI contributions through the job and earned in that year enough to pay tax... but was also paying NI as a self employed person (and not making much money as doing that all) and i've got records of paying the quarterly class 2 payments but none of getting any automatic refunds...

says in this article (21st Dec 2014) you can claim back for 3 years... unless the rules have changed very recently... anybody know?

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11300887/Why-you-may-have-been-paying-the-wrong-National-Insurance-for-years.html

can you email these people? or is there just no doubt a prohibitively expensive phone line you have to call instead?

i think they close at the weekends anyway.