We got our marriage tax allowance but were immediately asked to pay it back?

farazk86

Hi,

Some context before reading the below: Me and my wife are not UK nationals. I am settled in UK on a indefinite visa and my wife is also on a dependant visa. I have been in UK since last 11 years and my wife joined me last year. There are no restrictions on work, we are both allowed to work full time and we both have national insurance numbers.

So, I came to know about marriage tax allowance after reading it on the MSE website: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/marriage-tax-allowance/

Happy to find out about this, I called the helpline for HMRC to transfer my wife's personal allowance to me. (My wife does not work, I earn but am much lower than the £50,270 threshold).

After a long wait and after passing the security questions stage, I told the lady why I called. She took some details about who is transferring allowance to who and also verified that the person transferring is earning less than £12,570. After all these verifications, she went ahead and updated my tax code and told me that went through to my employers and it should be reflected in my online accounts in the next 72 hours and that I should get the £1,260 allowance now.

Now after this, just to verify that I got for the past four years as mentioned in the above link and that I wanted to verify everything went through properly (I have this problem of reassuring and verifying everything), I asked if the back pay date is from our marriage date or from when my wife joined me in UK. After this she started asking questions about us being UK nationals to which I replied we are not.

Then she started being concerned and said she should never have approved this and she should have asked this at the security checks stage, and that we are not eligible as this is only for UK nationals. She said that since this has already gone through I will have to pay it back myself. 

She did not explain further as how I will have to pay it back and the call ended.

I trust MSE website and am always sure that they have all the information covered on their links, but in the page linked above there is no mention of this being only eligible for UK nationals. 

Was this an error on the lady I was speaking with from HMRC or is this a mistake from MSE by not including this in the article or the FAQ's?

If this is true that we are not eligible and we have to pay this back. How do i do that?

Thanks

Savvy_Sue

When was your marriage date? When did your wife join you in the UK?

I can't find anything which says you are NOT entitled to this as non-UK nationals, so I'm wondering if there's some other detail which caused her reaction. 

farazk86

Savvy_Sue said:

When was your marriage date? When did your wife join you in the UK?

I can't find anything which says you are NOT entitled to this as non-UK nationals, so I'm wondering if there's some other detail which caused her reaction. 

She joined me this year in March, and we were married in 2019.

But she did not even ask these details, after hearing about us being on visa she asked if we are nationals. To which I replied we are not and then she said we are ineligible and she should not have approved this.

Brie

Was this all on one phone call??  If so your code wouldn't yet have affected your pay and there would therefore be nothing to pay back.  Even if there was it would be a case of getting a small amount extra in one pay and a small amount less in the next.

As for the non UK bit....well I claim this as my OH doesn't earn.  I'm non UK but my OH is.  No one has ever asked about that and I would have said it was discrimination given that you have the right to work in the UK.

Brie

Also - your NI number is based on a number of things - most of which I don't understand frankly but I believe by giving her the NIs for both you and your wife it would be obvious that you were not born in the UK.  If there was some block on non UK people not being able to claim certain benefits such as the marriage allowance I would have thought that would be a flag in their computer system to ask more questions.  Even if it wasn't in the computer system someone who deals with tax queries should know how the NIs work and be able to spot when someone is an incomer of some sort.  

farazk86

Brie said:

Was this all on one phone call??  If so your code wouldn't yet have affected your pay and there would therefore be nothing to pay back.  Even if there was it would be a case of getting a small amount extra in one pay and a small amount less in the next.

As for the non UK bit....well I claim this as my OH doesn't earn.  I'm non UK but my OH is.  No one has ever asked about that and I would have said it was discrimination given that you have the right to work in the UK.

Yes, this was in a single phone call I made this morning.

She said it went through and gave me my new tax code as well and said it will be reflected in your employers online records within the next 72 hours.

She did mention the £1260 amount. So I dont know if I will get all that together or a bit at a time as you mentioned. The MSE article did mention this amount if backdated to 4 years. Did she backdate my request by default?

And yes, the non-UK one struck me as odd as well, as we are allowed to work and this was not mentioned in the MSE article.

farazk86

Brie said:

Also - your NI number is based on a number of things - most of which I don't understand frankly but I believe by giving her the NIs for both you and your wife it would be obvious that you were not born in the UK.  If there was some block on non UK people not being able to claim certain benefits such as the marriage allowance I would have thought that would be a flag in their computer system to ask more questions.  Even if it wasn't in the computer system someone who deals with tax queries should know how the NIs work and be able to spot when someone is an incomer of some sort.  

Agreed. She took all our details, NI numbers, past addresses etc and then approved the request and gave me my new tax code.

It was only after I asked the additional questions (me and my big mouth right?) was when all this confusion occurred. She was concerned because she said this has already gone through. and she cant undo this now.

So she said I will have to pay this back in the future?

kezzygirl

It will be a nominal amount you repay,if they even process the tax code change.. Its not a lump sum. If your wife only joined you 6 months ago you may have only qualified for it the past six months anyway.

farazk86

kezzygirl said:

It will be a nominal amount you repay,if they even process the tax code change.. Its not a lump sum. If your wife only joined you 6 months ago you may have only qualified for it the past six months anyway.

Thats fair then. I thought it was a lump sum amount and I was worrying about how to pay that back, if I had to pay it back.

But if all this detail is automatically considered by the system such as visa dates and what not then I dont have to worry.

Thanks

BellaLasagna2018

I did a quick Google search which brought me to this page: https://www.gov.uk/marriage-allowance 

i can’t find anywhere where it says it’s for UK nationals only. I wonder if the woman you spoke to was spooked by the word “visa”. You should double check and not assume she was right and you were wrong. 

RAS

You are obviously not going to get this back-dated by four years if you only married in 2019.

But I think you need to go back and check that you can get it going forward and ask about back-dating until you marriage date.