Does getting married change how much tax you pay

wolf33055

I just got married, and going through the usual changing of the wifes name and informing the relevent people. two quick questions

a, do i have to tell the tax man?
b, does it have any effect, will i save or loose money

Thanks

Chris

dunstonh

There is no difference any more. When you have children, then you will get an improved tax situation.

wolf33055

darn, ho well best get up to the bedroom then, got to get my tax bill down somehow

Thanks anyway

robnye

There is no difference any more.  When you have children, then you will get an improved tax situation.

i assume this is because of tax credits?

or is there some other tax benefit that I am not aware off?

lisyloo

There can be a benefit with income tax on savings and capital gains tax on shares.

Gift between spouses are tax free.
You can make use of this if you are on different tax rates.
So for exmaple if one partner pays basic rate tax and the other pays no tax then it makes sense to put all savings in the name of the non-tax payer. The same applies if one of you pays basic rate tax and one of you pays higher rate tax.

Similarly with shares. If you expect to make any capital gains then it can make sense to split your shares up so that you have 2 capital gains tax allowances (£8.2K each).

You also get two ISA allowances.
These are individual accounts (that's what the I stands for) but because you can gift money to each other tax free then effectively you can use both.

itslougher

Hi,

I can see i'm going to go in to the 40% tax bracket this year by a couple of thousand and i would like to gift the excess to my wife who is a student earning peanuts. How can i find out more info on this?

Thanks,
Gav

MarkyMarkD

You can't gift excess income to someone else.

All you can do is transfer assets so that the income on them is earned by your wife.

If the excess income is from your work, you can't do anything about it. But at the very least you should transfer all spare cash into her name so that the interest is taxed at a lower rate.