Splitting tax credits between married couple

Redback

Registered User
Messages
30
Hi...
im just wondering is there some magic ratio that I should be working towards to help spilt tax credits up and take best advantage of them.

My husband earns 69,000 and I earn 43,000.
Not sure if I need to provide any other information.
At the moment my husband has all the personal tax credits that I could transfer over.
(I read somewhere you can't transfer PAYE or employment related tax credits.)

I'm not sure if it makes any difference who has the tax credits...is it not like a see saw?
In that if one pays more tax, the other pays less?


I guess the whole thing that sparked this question off ( that you may be able to shed light on) was that since January my net pay has fallen by 110 a fortnight! Despite the reduction in USC.

I went from being a tax code of F1 in Dec to cumulative in January.
I notice also I didn't have any Pension related deduction in Dec but now I have a PRD of 60euro.

I should say I only started back to work in September having been off for the 8 months before that.

Anyway, I'd be grateful if anyone can shed some light on what if anything I should b doing!
Finding it a tad confusing and disheartening working when I'm now down 220 a month.
 
You can transfer tax credits and rate bands as you wish between you and your spouse provided you aren't getting separate treatment (married couple being treated as two single people) with the exception of the PAYE tax credit. You should get a balancing statement for 2015 as it sounds like you might have a few months tax credits due to you if you are on a week 1/month 1 basis.

talk to your tax office. It can be confusing and but you have is split out between you and your husband it stays like that until you change it in the future.
 
In this case, there is no advantage to being married.

It's only relevant if one spouse earns more than €33,800 and the other earns less than €33,800.

If both earn more than that (as in the OP's case), there's no advantage. Easiest to think of it like this:

1. Boyfriend and girlfriend both earning €33,800 pay the same amount of tax as a husband and wife earning €33,800 each.

2. Boyfriend and girlfriend earning €42,800 and €24,800 pay more tax than a husband and wife earning the same. Reason being, they can share the extra €9,000 of the wife's otherwise unused standard rate cut off point.

3. Boyfriend and girlfriend earning €42,800 and nothing pay more tax than a husband and wife earning the same. Reason being, the €9,000 of standard rate cut off point referred to above and the extra €1,650 tax credit the husband can claim for his wife.

But once you both earn reasonable money, it's all moot.