# Key Post: joint tax assesment or not?  - Key Post



## Marion (5 Feb 2002)

*This was originally posted by Rickie*


Howdy folks,
I got married on 5/5/01.My wife and I are still being taxed as single people.What I want to know is 1.Would it benefit us if we were to be taxed jointly. 2.If so ,is it possible to claim tax back.

I earn approx. £35,000 p.a.(44440 euro).My wife takes home £188 per week (239).


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## Justine (5 Feb 2002)

*joint tax assessment or not?*

Hi Rickie,

I'm asking myself the same question. I got married on 25/07/01. I earn £30K p.a., my husband earns £16K. 

We opted for joint assessment. According to the Rev.Com, this would benefit me rather than my husband, as less of my income will now be in the higher tax rate. 

As regards claiming tax back, yes this is possible as well. Apparently, when you both receive your P60s, you can do a tax return for the year, calculate what you would have paid in tax in joint assessment from the date you got married versus the amount of tax you paid as single people. If there's a difference between them, the Rev. will refund you the difference.

On saying that, we haven't gotten around to doing that yet, as I haven't received my P60, therefore I can't do our tax return yet!!  So everything I said above is only information from the Rev., it's not actually my own experience.    

Has anyone else done this? Is this correct?

Justine


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## Tommy (5 Feb 2002)

*Re: joint tax assessment or not?*

Most married couples are jointly assessed for income tax. The main advantage is where the earnings of one spouse are comfortably above the high-rate tax band and the other spouse is paying tax at the lower rate. Even if that situation does not apply just now to a couple, it still makes good sense to opt for joint assessment as circumstances can change over time.

Justine, you're correct in saying that the best way to opt for joint assessment is to do a tax return. If you're both in the PAYE net, then you'll need your P60's to do that.

When you're doing your tax return, it might be a good idea for both of you to do simple tax calculations based on your income and tax credits/allowances for the previous year (as single people) - just in case either of you find that tax was over-deducted on your earnings. 

I remember a few years ago doing a simple tax return for a PAYE taxpayer. I asked him for his P60 for the previous year and found he had a refund of £400 due to him. It finally transpired that an error had been made every year for 6 or 7 years. He ended up getting a tax refund of £3,500!

Although this type of thing doesnt happen too often, as the Lotto ad says, it could be you!

Tommy
www.mcgibney.com


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## Rex22 (6 Feb 2002)

*Re: joint tax assessment or not?*

If you are married and taxed seperately, is there a timeline that you have to change to joint before the option expires?


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## Tommy (6 Feb 2002)

*Re: joint tax assessment or not?*

Not to my knowledge

Tommy
www.mcgibney.com


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## Justine (13 Feb 2002)

*Re: joint tax assessment or not?*

Just another question that has cropped up on this matter today.

Both hubby and I received Tax Credit Certs today with our new Marriage Tax Credits on them. On studying them, it seems that these are still only the Interim Certs, with last year's Credits etc on them.

The one question I have now is that the Revenue seems to have "split" the Standard Rate Band of E50790 quite evenly between us.(E25392 to him, E25353 to me) This would mean that more of my income would be in the higher tax rate, whereas the Revenue's advice to me, as seen on my post above, was to be jointly assessed so that I would benefit. What do we do? Is it possible to split the Standard Rate Band unevenly? (in this case, we would want to give E37K to me and E19K to hubby) Do I just contact the Rev and ask them to do this? 

By the way, am I one of the only people in the country who has not received a P60 yet??? I don't remember it being this late any other year. (Funnier yet...my employer is a certain Government Department which is in the news quite a lot at the moment!!!)

Justine


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## Tommy (18 Feb 2002)

*Re: joint tax assessment or not?*

Hi Justine, 

yes, the Revenue should be happy and able to deal with your query if you phone them.

I would imagine that loads of employers are having problems getting P60's issued on time this year - mainly because of the adjustment to the calendar tax year and also because of the need to prioritise the implementation of euro changeover plans since Jan 1.

Tommy
www.mcgibney.com


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## Shane (12 Jul 2002)

*joint/separate/2 singles*

Just spotted this thread as it's been bumped up the list as a key post.

Re Rex22's question about a time limit on changing to joint and Tommy's reply that there's no time limit:

There is no time limit if you are currently separately assessed as a married couple.  However, if you're still assessed as 2 single people because you haven't got around to telling the revenue that you're married (we didn't for over 5 years!), then you can't backdate the changeover to joint assessment so you could potenetially lose out on transfer of allowances etc.


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## Brendan Burgess (3 Jan 2006)

*Re: >>joint tax assesment or not?  - Key Post*

See the Revenue's guide to [broken link removed]

Brendan


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## Nosey (9 Jan 2006)

*Re: >>joint tax assesment or not?  - Key Post*

As I read through the threads, I realise I am in need of some tax advice. Myself and my husband are jointly assessed ( but he gets more relief somehow). I earn about 20k more so should we change this set up. 

Besides finding out the best way to be assessed we'd like assistance on submitting our tax return so we'd like to engage an expert. What can I expect to pay to have our affairs looked after by a tax adviser/accountant. We're both PAYE workers and we have rental income from one investment property and a couple of medical expenses so its really pretty straight forward. 

Can anyone  recommend a tax expert/accountant?


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## ClubMan (9 Jan 2006)

*Re: >>joint tax assesment or not?  - Key Post*

Going on joint/aggregated married taxation should leave the couple no worse off and potentially better off than before.


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## fme (9 Jan 2006)

*Re: >>joint tax assesment or not?  - Key Post*

Hi,
After reading the revenue site I'm still not 100% sure on the following:

If both partners earn >29,400 (or whatever the standard rate cutoff is) then am I correct in saying that it makes no difference to the total combined net pay whether you have separate or joint assessment?


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## ClubMan (9 Jan 2006)

*Re: >>joint tax assesment or not?  - Key Post*

As far as I know it makes no difference in this case if you are on joint/aggregated or separate assessment but you could be losing out if you are [broken link removed] - the third category of [broken link removed] which I still can't see any reason for any couple choosing but which they will remain on after marriage unless they inform _Revenue _of their marriage. You can sanity check the differences between joint/aggregated or separate assessment and assessment as two single individuals using [broken link removed].


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## trading_wizz (23 Sep 2006)

*Re: >>joint tax assesment or not?  - Key Post*



fme said:


> Hi,
> After reading the revenue site I'm still not 100% sure on the following:
> 
> If both partners earn >29,400 (or whatever the standard rate cutoff is) then am I correct in saying that it makes no difference to the total combined net pay whether you have separate or joint assessment?


 
Absolutely correct - it makes no difference if both you and your partner earn more than 32k (2006). 

It still probably makes sense to do separate assessment instead of assessment as separate individuals, should say your partner start working part time ot takes time off because of pregnancy etc. Then any credits she doesn't use up to 32k (20%) can be transferred over to you.
​


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## jrewing (4 Jan 2007)

After some years abroad, my wife and I began work in Ireland in the second half of 2006. We benefited from split year tax treatment, which means we could earn up to the full SRCOP at the standard rate, regardless of the fact that we were earning abroad for the first 6 months of the year.

It now turns out that my wife did not reach the SRCOP (while I was above it), so in theory, we should be able to do a tax return to that we reduce our combined tax payment.

Now, the Revenue guide to taxation of married couples provides a example calculation of how this works in the first year of marriage. They pro-rate the annual amount by the number of months married. Our situation is slightly different, we married in April, so all the months worked in Ireland were as a married couple (although we were assessed as singles in 2006). Can we claim back the full amount of tax, or will it be pro-rated to account for the fact that we weren't married for first 3 months of year?


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## Clarkey (4 Jan 2007)

jrewing said:


> After some years abroad, my wife and I began work in Ireland in the second half of 2006. We benefited from split year tax treatment, which means we could earn up to the full SRCOP at the standard rate, regardless of the fact that we were earning abroad for the first 6 months of the year.
> 
> It now turns out that my wife did not reach the SRCOP (while I was above it), so in theory, we should be able to do a tax return to that we reduce our combined tax payment.
> 
> Now, the Revenue guide to taxation of married couples provides a example calculation of how this works in the first year of marriage. They pro-rate the annual amount by the number of months married. Our situation is slightly different, we married in April, so all the months worked in Ireland were as a married couple (although we were assessed as singles in 2006). Can we claim back the full amount of tax, or will it be pro-rated to account for the fact that we weren't married for first 3 months of year?


 
The year of marriage credit is based on how many months during the full year you were married. If you were married in April Revenue will calculate the tax payable as two single persons, calculate the tax payable as a married couple and if there is less tax payable as a married couple you will receive 9/12ths of this bec ause you were married for 9 months out of 12


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## jrewing (5 Jan 2007)

"If you were married in April Revenue will calculate the tax payable as two single persons, calculate the tax payable as a married couple and if there is less tax payable as a married couple you will receive 9/12ths of this bec ause you were married for 9 months out of 12"

Is this true even if all of our earnings were in the second half of year, when we were already married ? Do we have a case for all of the difference ?


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## snoozy (2 Nov 2010)

I know this is an old thread but after a search I think it's the best one for my query.

My husband and I are Separately Assessed for tax, up until recently this hasn't made any difference to the tax we pay as we both earned around the same.  We now need to decide if we should be jointly assessed for 2009 (I verified with revenue that we can change our assessment as far back as 2006).  My husband lost his job in 2009 and for 6 months his only income was JB, I'm guessing it would make sense for us to have been jointly assessed in 2009 and we may now have overpaid tax.

Can someone let me know what we need to take into account when calculating which form of assessment is of most benefit for us for 2009?

thanks,
snoozy


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## JessieM (25 Feb 2013)

*Switch from single assessment to separate assessment*

Hi, hope that someone can advise on this as I've read the revenue guidelines and am still not clear on what to do.

We got married in 2008 but have remained on assessment as single individuals. Since then we've had 2 children so I have had 2 sets of maternity leave (both paid and unpaid).

I am wondering whether we should switch to separate assessment and how I go about this: we are both in employment, both earning over 30K, so can I request that we switch to separate assessment but share our tax credits equally / how does it work? I don't want to switch to one person getting ALL of the tax credits while both of us are working. 

Also if we switch to separate assessment does that mean we have to do tax returns every year?

And finally can I claim for any refund of unused tax credits for the years 2009 - 2012 inclusive if we do switch? 
We are in the process of getting together medical receipts to claim for medical expenses back to 2009, so at the end of that, if we have also switched to separate assessment, do I just request balancing statements for both of us and any refund due would be calculated there?

(If you request a balancing statement, is there any chance you would OWE tax?)

Thanks! 

Jessie


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