Everything Your Child Needs to Know About National Insurance

Everything Your Child Needs to Know About National Insurance

Best known for their popular line of numbers, National Insurance numbers are issued to every British child at the age of 15 years and 9 months. These numbers serve a variety of different purposes. The government describes them as being a “personal account number”, while most of us know them best for being required to fill out our taxes properly. If you have teenage children fast approaching that ever so special age of 15 years and 9 months, it’s a good idea to give them a quick primer on what their NI number is, and why they need to keep their number safe.

• What is a National Insurance Number?

National insurance numbers are issued to every British citizen automatically, with a number being sent, and presumably generated/assigned, to every child at the age of 15 years and 9 months. This number is synonymous with you personally for a number of governmental purposes, particularly tax and national insurance contributions. As such, it will never change.

National Insurance numbers can be found on certain types of documentation, including payslips from jobs, any P60 forms, any letters you are sent by the government into matters regarding your tax, pension, and benefits. These won’t be much use to your child right now, of course, but they will be issued with a National Insurance letter containing the information.

• What to do If Your Child’s NI Number is Lost

If you’re a responsible parent with much better instincts for this kind of thing than your children, you might want to keep their NIC safe for them. Of course, there are a number of ways of easily and securely backing up that information; you can write the number down elsewhere, and your child can use their smartphone to snap a picture and or note down the letter. But keeping that original letter safe is still a good idea. You can’t register for any work through an employment agency if you don’t have paper proof of your NI number. Your letter is the best proof.

If your child’s national insurance card does get lost, or if theirs arriving suddenly makes you realize that you’ve lost yours, so you better sort that out before you speak to your kid. The good news is that getting a copy of it is relatively straightforward.

• National Insurance Number Lost

If you’ve lost your national insurance number go here to see if losnationalinsurancenumber.co.uk can help you. If you contact the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), MRC, or Job Centre Plus, they can recover your National Insurance number for you. However, this doesn’t always go as smoothly as people hope for. If you’re willing to pay a small fee of £21, you can use losnationalinsurancenumber.co.uk to take care of things for you. All you have to do is fill in an application on their website. They will then send you all the documentation you need, along with a prepaid envelope to send to HMRC.

National insurance numbers are important pieces of information. It isn’t easy making teenagers understand why this number is so important, but it is worth emphasising it to them anyway. Try to keep that first NI letter safe. If it does go missing, apply to track down your number as quickly as possible.

Guest Article.