SA29. Your social security insurance, benefits and healthcare rights in the European Economic Area
Insurance and contributions
11. Voluntary contributions
If you are working in another EEA country, you will normally have to be insured under that country's scheme. But the EEA rules mean that if you move from one EEA country to another, you will not lose your social security rights, provided you follow the rules on these pages.
Whether or not you are working in another EEA country, you can usually decide if you want to pay into the UK NI scheme. These are called 'voluntary contributions' because you do not have to pay them if you do not want to. If you do pay 'voluntary contributions', they may help you get a UK State Pension and some other UK benefits. You need to decide if it would be in your interests to pay UK voluntary contributions. To help you, you should note that:
- if you are sent to work in another EEA country by your UK employer, and you are insured under that other country's scheme, you can get UK Incapacity Benefit, contribution-based Jobseeker's Allowance or Maternity Allowance when you come back to the UK. But you must have kept your normal home in the UK;
and
- you must not be able to get the other country's benefit;
- for all the weeks that you are doing work for which you are paid while you are abroad, you can usually pay voluntary contributions at either
- the Class 2 rate; or
- the Class 3 rate;
- for any other weeks you can pay at the Class 3 rate only;
- Class 2 contributions count for State Pension, bereavement benefits, Maternity Allowance and short-term Incapacity Benefit;
- Class 3 contributions count for State Pension and bereavement benefits; and
- you cannot use voluntary UK contributions to help you get UK contribution-based Jobseeker's Allowance, nor do they give you cover for healthcare (What healthcare you can get in other EEA countries).
If you want to pay voluntary contributions to the UK NI scheme while you are in another EEA country, write to HM Revenue and Customs as soon as possible.
You must pay your voluntary contributions within certain time limits for them to count for benefit.
Note – You will not be able to pay voluntary contributions to the UK scheme if you are already paying voluntary contributions in another EEA country.