From the Pension Service guide to State Pensions [NP46]... A qualifying year for the basic State Pension is a tax year in which you have received (or are treated as having received) qualifying earnings of at least 52 times the Lower Earnings Limit for that year. You can get a State Pension forecast online from the Check your State Pension service. Visit www.gov.uk/check-state-pension for more information. As NIC cannot be paid in the tax year before the individual reaches the age of 16, or in a tax year after state pension age is achieved, those ages define the period of working life for NIC purposes. For more information on National Insurance contributions for self-employed earners, please see section 6. A woman who made this choice may get a new State Pension based on different rules if these will give her more than the amount of new State Pension that she would otherwise get based on her own National Insurance record. Someone who has already worked for part of the year, may need to make fewer Class 3 contributions and therefore pay less. From 6th April 2010 a qualifying year is any year in which your earnings factor is equal to or more than the Lower Earnings Level for that year. One final thing to consider is that if you work abroad for a foreign employer, you may have to pay foreign contributions – these are not typically reclaimable. You’ll need 35 qualifying years to get the new full State Pension if you do not have a National Insurance record before 6 April 2016. You need a smaller number of years to be eligible at all and to receive any State Pension. This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. Watch for updates on the Microsoft News Blog. Each ‘qualifying year’ you add to your National Insurance record after 5 April 2016 will add a certain amount (about £5 a week, this is £175.20 divided by 35) (totals do not sum due to rounding) to your ‘starting amount’, until you reach the full amount of the new State Pension or you reach State Pension age, whichever happens first. The age at which individuals are entitled to a state pension is gradually increasing. You can find out more about the new state pension on the GOV.UK website . Access this article and thousands of others like it free for 7 days with a trial of TolleyGuidance. TolleyGuidance gives you direct access to critical, comprehensive and up-to-date tax information and expertise you can rely on. You might also qualify if you’ve paid married women’s or widow’s reduced rate contributions - find out more about this on the Gov.uk website here. Martin Lewis explains how you could get £4,500, State pension age but not claimed pension? If you go abroad but you have fewer contributions than you need for the year to count, you can think about making ‘voluntary contributions’ – ‘Class 3’ NICs. The amount of state pension you receive depends on how long you've been making National Insurance (NI) contributions towards it. The full amount of the new State Pension is £175.20 a week (2020 to 2021 rate). If you move between the UK and EU/EEA for the first time after the end of the transition period your position will depend on the outcome of Brexit negotiations between the UK and EU. A ‘qualifying year’ is a tax year (April to April) during which you have paid, have been treated as having paid or have been credited with enough National Insurance Contributions (NICs) to make that year qualify towards a Basic State Pension. From then on, the state pension age for a woman is aligned to that of a man and so will eventually reach 68 years for those born after 6 April 1978.