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Marriage allowance help please.

happyhero
happyhero Posts: 1,276 Forumite
Part of the Furniture 500 Posts

Hi, I need some guidance please with Marriage allowance where you pass some of your allowance to your spouse. I have Googled my query but cannot find the answer.

Over the last few years I was paying tax on income, receiving an income of about £18,000 from my BT pension and my wife was still working part time earning a gross salary of about £10,500 but in May this year she quit her old job and got a new one earning just over £12,500 gross per year but based on the last couple of months where she has been getting overtime which looks like it will continue indefinitely she will have a gross figure somewhere over £16,000 for the year, if we assumed a complete year only on that new job.

So it’s a bit messy. It looks like she will easily become a tax payer earning above her basic allowance this year but she has changed jobs in this financial year from where she was earning less than her allowance to this new job and she had a couple of bad months where she only received a few hundred pounds, which was her old job figuring out what she was owed. Looking at it all I believe she will still end up paying tax, (possibly ending up with a gross figure of £13,000 to 14,000 or more) especially bearing in mind the fact we did the thing with the marriage allowance and her tax code is now 1131N.

She is 61 and I am 62.

So what do I do? Do I wait until the end of the year to see where she gets to or should I be doing anything now (don’t want to be told off, with someone saying you knew what was going to happen and did nothing).

I suspect I must wait as anything could happen before the end of the year, but then my question is what do I do then or what do I have to do then? We have talked about just leaving the marriage allowance as it is but can you do that or do you have to do something and if so what, is there a form to fill in?

Any help or advice appreciated.

 


Comments

  • If she's not a higher rate (40%) payer then she's still eligible.

    If she is happy paying extra tax in the knowledge you are (presumably) saving an equivalent amount then you don't really need to do anything.
  • molerat
    molerat Posts: 33,046 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    edited 31 July 2023 at 12:27PM
    You don't need to do anything.  As it stands if she is earns over £11310 this year she will pay tax on any amount over that.  You will get £252 knocked off your tax bill.  Worst case scenario is she pays £252 extra tax, you pay £252 less tax.  If she is going to earn over £12570 next year you can cancel the MA any time before 5 April for next year. But you don't need to do anything.
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