Giving some of your tax allowance to OH

I was well below the limit for paying tax, I think it was about £117 but cannot remember exactly but they said £213 OH had overpaid and the same I owed them. I get in a panic about official forms so OH applied for me by 'phone. The silly thing is that they would not speak to him until they had got permission from me to allow him to act on my behalf. He had to pass the 'phone to me and I had to say 'Yes, I am Mrs ......' Now if you think about that security measure it is wide open to abuse. I could have been his secretary, girlfriend, sister, mother couldn't I! OH is spot on when it comes to tax forms, he handled them all the time as he was a manager before he retired and did the tax for his employees. Hopefully we will hear soon that the whole thing has been cancelled back to what it used to be.

Just noticed that you said husband had overpaid his tax by £213.00 which means a refund but I still don't understand why you have to pay £213.00 if you are well below the tax threshold.

How did you apply for this Yorkshiregel. For a lot of people it is a phone call and they are told straightaway that they are eligible.

It looks to me to be a complete mess again, just like the child tax allowance.

I am talking about unused tax allowance of mine being transferred to my husband to reduce his tax bill, just to clarify.

Still not heard anything from them.

OK thanks, I didn't realise there was a new marriage tax allowance, just thought you could choose who claims it.

TriciaF, Rigby46 has explained but it is a bit confusing when both allowances have similar names.

I gave my unused allowance to my H at the start of the scheme and then H got a letter a few months ago saying he owed HMRC £213 which was the amount he had been allowed. It has been deducted in instalments for a few months now.

The recent one is called the marriage tax allowance and the one you mention TriciaF is the married couples allowance.

ps gretel - I thought Marriage Allowance only applies if you were born in 1935 or before?

It was certainly an eye opener for us, having to fill in a french tax return. Especially when used to PAYE, conversion to euros and different financial year dates.
Yorkshiregel we have a small interest only UK mortgage on a house which is rented out, and put all that in husband's name, even though the house is jointly owned. Because my own allowance is at its limit.
That seems to have worked OK, for the last 15 years.

We rang the TAX office and the chap there was very helpful and told OH that if he gave me some of his allowance he would pay a bit of tax and mine go down but overall we would be paying less tax so we did it. Although living in France we still pay UK income tax - Govt pensions - so tax deducted at source
Here in France you are taxed as a couple. The system is quite different as no personal allowance - we do get an allowance for the tax we pay in UK but it is not as much as we actually pay! Reading that you would think we were getting a fortune but that is far from the case !

Also, although you are eligible if the lower earner earns less than£11000 ( this tax year), it's on a sliding scale so if you had an income of £10500, you wouldn't benefit as much as if your income was eg £9000. They will also backdate it for one year.

With Marriage Allowance your tax code should come down by 110 to 990N (assuming you are on normal tax code of 1100L) and your husband's tax code should go up by 110. This means that your husband can earn £1100 extra and not pay tax on it. Is it just for 2016-17 tax year or for 2015-16 as well. There is a helpline number you can phone 03002003300. I think it would be worth giving HMRC a call so they can explain why you have had a tax bill. If you were born before 1935 different rules apply.