Sharing the rental income tax burden

boycie10

My mother passed away 10 years ago and left me her property I have been renting it out since then. It was only last year that I retrospectively paid the tax owed over the 10 year period through self assessment. I have not worked for the last 5 or so years so my personal tax allowance has not been exceeded (I am a lower rate tax payer) but for the previous 5 years when I was working I calculated the total bill, including late payment penalties to be around £6000 which I paid to HMRC last year
My wife is also a lower rate tax payer who did not use her allowance up during some the previous years when I was renting it, at that time I was working so I had exceeded my tax free allowance. I have only recently registered the property in my name prior to paying the back tax owed. My question is can we use my wife's unused tax allowance from previous years as well as mine against the rental income and reclaim some of the tax paid from previous years even though the property is not in her name?

[Deleted User]

No - there was no ability to transfer unused allowances between spouses five years ago.

00ec25

boycie10 wrote: »

even though the property is not in her name?

no, she had (at the time) no entitlement to any of the rental income, and so has no tax liability in respect of it.

boycie10

I suspected that was the case but I had to be sure.
Many thanks anyway