Thousands of Britons were blocked from topping up their State Pension contributions before the crucial April 5 deadline due to an error by HMRC.
This left approximately 21,000 people unable to complete their transactions on the final day.
The online service for recording payable gaps in National Insurance contributions between 2006/7 and 2020/21 was mistakenly taken offline a day early.
Those who logged in on April 5 were met with an error message incorrectly stating that the deadline had already passed.
HMRC has acknowledged the mistake and apologised to those affected by the system outage.
The transitional arrangements had given people until Saturday at 11.59pm to rectify gaps in their National Insurance records from 2006 to 2018. This opportunity was introduced as part of pension reforms in 2016.
State pension warning as thousands blocked from increasing payments due to HMRC error
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People need at least 35 years of full National Insurance payments to receive the full State Pension, which recently increased to £230 a week.
As Martin Lewis explained: "Think of as for each National Insurance year you get a token. If you get the token, you get the token for a full year. It goes into the state pension piggy bank."
The financial expert had repeatedly urged those aged 43 to 73 to take advantage of this temporary arrangement.
Filling these gaps could potentially boost retirement payouts by tens of thousands of pounds.
HMRC has confirmed to MoneySavingExpert that the error was on their end, affecting around 21,000 people who attempted to use the service on the final day.
Britons are worried about the future of the state pension GETTYA HMRC spokesperson said: "We're sorry that customers were unable to use our online service on Saturday to top up National Insurance contributions for years prior to 2021.
"We will contact anyone affected directly about the payments they wanted to make to ensure they don't miss out."
The system shutdown particularly impacted those who had waited until the final day to complete their National Insurance top-ups.
Many found themselves facing a message incorrectly stating that the NI deadline had already passed.
HMRC has stated that anyone who had begun to fill in their NI contributions record by the deadline will still be able to do so.
Those who started using the online NI service or submitted a DWP call-back form by April 5 should be contacted by the tax authority.
According to MoneySavingExpert, HMRC indicated that affected individuals do not need to get in touch themselves.
However, MSE noted: "If you don't hear anything, you can try to contact HMRC yourself."
The DWP call-back request form remained operational throughout the weekend, unlike the online service.
Those who submitted a request on or before April 5 will still be eligible to purchase missing years back to 2006.
HMRC has acknowledged the error
GETTYWhile the transitional arrangement has now ended, Britons still have options to improve their State Pension entitlement.
They can still fill any gaps in your National Insurance record from the past six years where they were not working or claiming benefits. This means from April 6, they can only buy back to 2019.
This can be done by paying Voluntary National Insurance contributions. The deadline for these payments is April 5 each year.
Those with low income, who took time off work, lived abroad, or were carers who didn't claim the right credits may have missing years to check.
Parents should also ensure Child Benefit is claimed by the non-working parent to receive National Insurance credits.
