Overtime and being taxed very high

Just wondering can anyone help.

My husband has a basic salary and gets paid every month but he does alot of overtime to bring up his wages and is on incentives as well. I work part time and I rang the tax office to see if he could get some of my tax credits but they said that I am using them because I am including my JSB. If I was earning €50 less I could transfer some credits to him. I was just wondering would that be worth my while. My husbands salary and mine are both in the lower tax bracket. The tax office said that they would increase the tax band for him so that he could earn more at 20%. Would that make a difference.

Hope this makes sense. Thanks.

You'll have to provide some more detail such as his

husband's basic wage, overtime amount
your part time wage, the amount of JSB
whether you have children or not

If you don't want to post these details just wait until the end of the year and send in both your P60s and ask Revenue for an end of year statement. They will refund you if you have paid too much.

To get an understanding of how it works you should first consider that ALL INCOME is taxable, you first work out the gross tax, then deduct the tax credit to give the net tax payable. A couple will normally have joint tax credits and bands. The bands determine whether you pay at the high rate and the credits lower the bill.

Hi he earns €21,500 basic but came out with €35,000 last year. I earn €15,800 but I also get €98.00 per week on JSB so that works out at €20,896.00. He paid roughly €5,000.00 in tax last year and I paid €1,000. Sorry clueless about all of this.

Thanks for your reply hopefully you can help me.

A married person can earn up to €45,400 at the standard rate with their spouse able to earn €27,400 at the standard rate. The married persons credit is €3660 with each of you entitled to the PAYE Cr of €1,830 each. As you are using up all your credits there is no benefit to transferring them.

In simple terms, you will never have more combined total net pay by reducing one persons earnings.
( there may be a possible exception is where it may allow you qualify for some extra social welfare but does not seem to apply in this case)

Go to http://taxcalc.eu/ and you will find that you were only due to pay less than 4,000 in income tax in 2009 so are due a refund. Send in P60s to Revenue. (I am excluding the income LEVY from this calculation)

Also ask Revenue to allocate a band of 21,000 to you and the remainder to your husband for 2010. This will ensure that you are not overpaying during 2010 and in a refund situation at the end of the year.

Get yourself registered over on revenue.ie for paye anytime. You can also apply for balancing statement there.