Marriage Tax Allowance

If you are married or in a civil partnership, you may be entitled to a £662 tax break called the marriage tax allowance.

Yet about two million couples are still missing out. It’s free money, so worth checking – and you can now qualify even if your partner has passed away.

The marriage tax allowance is a way for couples to transfer a proportion of their personal allowance (the amount you can earn tax-free each tax year) between them. Here’s our Q&A on how to get it, plus some key information.

Who can get it?

This is the most important factor as only people with these specific circumstances will be able to apply:

• You’re married or in a civil partnership (just living together doesn’t count).
• One of you needs to be a non-taxpayer, which usually just means earning less than the £11,500 personal allowance (£11,000 for 2016/17, £10,600 for 2015/16).
• The other needs to be a basic 20% rate taxpayer (higher or additional-rate taxpayers aren’t eligible for this allowance). This means you’d normally need to earn less than £45,000 (£43,000 for 2016/17 or if you live in Scotland, £42,385 for 2015/16).
• You both must have been born on or after 6 April 1935.

So in a nutshell one of you must be a non-taxpayer and one must be a basic-rate taxpayer.