Your National Insurance Number makes sure that your National Insurance contributions and tax are recorded against your name. Your National Insurance number is unique to you- it is made up of letters and numbers and will stay the same throughout your life. So, what do you do if you don’t know your National Insurance number?
Find Online Through Your Personal Tax Account or HMRC App
You will need to sign into this personal tax account using your Government Gateway user ID and password. If you don’t already have a Government Gateway account, you will need to prove your identity in order to set one up.
This link takes you to the personal tax account login, and also tells you what you need to set up a Government Gateway account if you don’t already have one.
Alternatively, you can find your National Insurance number via the HMRC app. You will need a Government Gateway user ID to log in.
Find on Existing Documents
An easy way to find your National Insurance number is on any existing documents you have.
This includes things like:
- Benefit letters
- Pension letters
- P60 forms (when you leave a job)
- P45 forms (given to you annually to show your earnings throughout the tax year)
- Payslips (maybe you have kept any hard copies you have received. Or maybe, your payslip is emailed to you or you access it through a secure site with a login, in which case you can find them online)
- Student finance letters
- Self-assessment tax returns
Ask Your Employer
When you start a new job, you have to supply your National Insurance number to prove your right to work in the UK, so your employer might have a copy of your number on file.
Ask HMRC
If you still can’t find your National Insurance number through any of these means, you can ask HMRC for it. You can do this by contacting the National Insurance numbers helpline, or by filling in form CA5403 and sending it to them by post.
Be aware that getting your National Insurance number is free and you will not have to pay for it. Watch out for any scam companies posing as HMRC trying to get you to pay for your number. Only go through the government website to ensure everything is legitimate; all links provided in this blog go straight to the relevant pages on the government website.