Just married.... Tax question.

gidxg03

Registered User
Messages
12
Hi all,

Just got married after Xmas. As both myself and my wife work is there any point in telling the tax office? Am I right in saying our tax allowances etc would remain the same and it's only of benifit if one person is working?

Thanks in advance.
 
Thanks clubman. According to your link we *have* to notify the tax office however we can decide to keep our tax credits as is or we can nominate an assessable spouse. Any idea which option would be best for us? I'm totally confused to be honest. In case it helps we both earn roughly the same - 34K per year.
 
If you read that FAQ in full then you'll see that the best deal for most couples is joint/aggregated assessment - particularly if one is on 42% tax and the other is on 20% or 0%. Even if there is no benefit from joint/aggregated assessment there should be no penalty either. If in doubt you should probably opt for this form of assessment. You may also be due some tax back from 2005.
 

On those figures it makes no difference what method of assessment you opt for. There is also no s6 "year of marriage relief" claim to be made.
 
if you are both high earners ie paying tax at 42% and will remain so going forward there is no benefit in being under joint assessment......however under the taxes act you are automatically deemed to be under joint assessment for the tax year following your marriage et seq. therefore on that basis you MUST inform your tax office
 
The main benefit is if one of you pays 20% tax and the other 42%. By combining your allowances and credits you could end up paying 20% on all earnings. ie if wife earns €20k (20%) and you earn €40k (20% & 42%). In this scenario your wife would have about €12k of her allowance left. By combining your allowances rather than you both having €32k allowance each and your wife not using all of hers you could combine your earnings and allowances and so you would earn up to €64k and pay tax at 20% on the entire income!
 

Completely wrong advice. Max SRCOP a spouse can have is 41K, not 64K
 
Sorry about that!
Can someone explain why the Revenue insist it shouldn't be that way?
 
Indivdualisation - broughtt in around 2000 to encourage women into the work force (or so Charlie said at the time).
In your example Lorcs, it does work that the couple can receive all their income at 20%.
The high earner gets 40K, which can be all taxed at the low rate of 20%, the low earner gets 20K which again can be all taxed at the low rate - this is because it states that "with an increase of 23,000 max", therefore this couple are no worse off than a couple earning 32K each.