Joint assessment

[Cooley]

Hi

Just wondering if anyone would know are we better off being assessed as a married couple or seperately, at the moment it is seperately.
One income is 33,000 and the other is 38,000. I will be taking 16 weeks unpaid maternity leave this year also.

Thanks for your help.

 

[mandelbrot]

You CANNOT be worse off under joint assessment. That is the whole point of joint assessment!

You might not necessarily be any better off, if you are both earning enough in your own right to be 41% taxpayers... although you would certainly be better off this year because of your unpaid maternity leave, which means there would be an amount of 205 tax band that could be transferred to your spouse.