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.