Monday 30 September 2013

Transferable allowance of £1,000 for certain married couples/civil partners


The Government has announced that a new tax break will be introduced in April 2015 for married couples where one spouse is a basic rate taxpayer whilst the other earns less than their personal allowance and, thus, is unable to utilise all their personal allowance.  In these circumstances one spouse can transfer £1,000 of their unused personal allowances; this would usually only happen because one spouse is not working or working only part-time, earning less than the personal allowance, which will be just over £10,000 in 2015/16.  

This announcement does not mean the couple get an extra £1,000 of allowances – it merely avoids £1,000 of personal allowance of one spouse being “wasted”, which is what happens under current legislation.

The devil will be in the detail when the legislation is presented to Parliament and nothing has been said yet about the availability of this transferable allowance for non-resident taxpayers.