Married persons tax allowance????

Gale_10

Hello,

Quick question - has married persons tax allowance been abolished? My husband just phoned tax office because he is on a single persons tax allowance and has been told thats the way they do it now?

Many thanks

Gale

brazilianwax

Yep. No tax breaks for being married anymore. You should each have an individual person's tax code each.

(Although i think there are some pensioners with retained entitlements)

margaretclare

Effectively for most people, it has been abolished and replaced by things like WTC and CTC.

It still exists for married people where one of the couple was born before April 1935. It applies to us, and when we got married in 2002 we chose to split the allowance between us, to set against our individual pensions incomes.

From April 1990 personal tax allowances were introduced, the concept of a man getting extra tax allowance because he 'had a wife to support' is out of date.

Margaret

StuA1964

brazilianwax wrote: »

(Although i think there are some pensioners with retained entitlements)

I think it was retained for the over 70's but was taken away a few years ago in favour of the child tax credit and working tax credit.

Think Mr Cameron mentioned he wanted to bring it back.

brazilianwax

Cameron proposed that where a wife/husband was at home caring for children the working partner should be able to utilise the other (non-earning) partner's tax free allowance in addition to their own.

AFAIK, WTC and CTC are only for those with children. So for DINKies (double income, no kids) there are no tax benefits at all.

chrisbur

You do not have to have children to claim Working Tax Credit, details at

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/TaxCreditsandChildBenefit/TaxCredits/DG_4015483

margaretclare

WTC is not only for people with kids. My eldest granddaughter gets it, and she has no kids nor does she intend to have any - she's gay! She gets the basic £1,730 extra a year.

Margaret

brazilianwax

I stand corrected - sorry!!! I did say AFAIK..........

Have checked. I'm not entitled to anything. Oh well.

margaretclare

For DINKIEs (double income, no kids) each of you has a personal allowance of £5225 each to set against your individual earned income. This is far better than the old system where a working wife IIRC had no personal allowance of her own and the husband had an extra allowance 'because he had a wife to support'.

Margaret