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Why is it fair that NI cons must be paid to the end of the tax year you reach 65 if you continue working?

• I was in the same class at school as my friend who I'd known from preschool days: our parents were good friends. He was a 3 weeks older than me being born at the end of March. We met up again about a year after leaving school as apprentices at the same small, family run, engineering firm. Many years later we lost touch. On reaching retirement age I elected to continue working. I did not complete the full year as I decided working any longer - as I was away from home in 'foreign climes' most of the year - was a bad idea. It was only on reckoning my final income for my last working year that I realized I was still paying NI cons at around 6 or 7% whilst some other 65 year old's apparently were not. Reason was (like my boyhood friend) they'd reached 65 shortly before the end of the tax year. In the limit, for a 65 year old born during the first quarter, he/she would save anything up to £2000 or more in NI cons if working up to a full year beyond retirement, i.e. beyond 65, whilst (me) and others like, just a few days younger would still have to pay up to the end of the current tax year or to the point they stopped working. Why don't NI cons simply stop when you each 65 if you carry on working - and many people do; some out of necessity - whatever point in the tax year you reach that age? Surely that would be fairer for everyone especially as this government wants people to carry on working beyond the present retirement age anyway: it certainly would be an incentive, especially if the "guy" you work alongside is not paying NI and you are (at 7 or 8% of gross salary) just because you happen to be on the wrong side of the tax year anniversary? Seems like a birthday lottery to me and that is, intrinsically, inequitable.

• Answer:

  What a long screed for a simple question. You stop paying NI when you are 65 (whether working or not) For a woman it is 60 but increasing to 65 over the next 5 years (or so). However NI (at least for self employed) is paid 3 months in arrears so when you reach 65 there are still 3 months NI to pay1.