If one of you earns below the personal allowance and the other is a basic-rate taxpayer, Marriage Allowance lets you transfer part of the unused allowance and save tax, and you can backdate the claim four years.
Marriage Allowance
Marriage Allowance lets a spouse or civil partner who earns below the personal allowance transfer 10 per cent of it to their partner, provided the partner is a basic-rate taxpayer. It reduces the couple's tax bill by a few hundred pounds a year, and unclaimed years can usually be backdated up to four tax years.
Your Tax Help Accountants checks that you qualify, makes the transfer, and backdates the claim across the years you were eligible, recovering the tax for each. It is a simple, legitimate saving that many eligible couples never claim.
The claim can be backdated four years, so a first Marriage Allowance claim often recovers several hundred pounds in one go, then continues automatically each year afterwards.
The Detail That Matters
The Marriage Allowance lets a lower-earning spouse transfer £1,260 of their personal allowance to a basic-rate partner, saving up to £252 a year. It can be backdated four years, so a first claim is often worth over £1,000, yet millions of eligible couples never claim it.
One partner must be a non-taxpayer (income below the £12,570 personal allowance) and the other a basic-rate taxpayer (income between £12,571 and £50,270). You must be married or in a civil partnership. If the higher earner is a higher-rate taxpayer, you do not qualify.
The non-taxpayer transfers £1,260 of allowance, which the basic-rate partner uses to shelter income that would have been taxed at 20%, a saving of £252 a year. It is applied through the recipient's tax code or Self Assessment.
You can claim for the current year and backdate up to four earlier years where you qualified, so an initial claim can be worth £1,000 or more as a lump sum, often a pleasant surprise for couples who did not know it existed.
If incomes change, a pay rise into the higher-rate band, or the non-earner starting work, the allowance may need cancelling or reviewing. We check eligibility each year so you neither miss the saving nor claim it wrongly.
The Marriage Allowance is one of the most under-claimed reliefs in the system: over a million eligible couples miss it, walking past £252 a year plus up to four years of backdating simply because no one told them.
Key Figures
How We Help
We confirm one of you earns below the personal allowance and the other is a basic-rate taxpayer, the conditions for Marriage Allowance.
Unclaimed years can usually be backdated four tax years. We recover the tax for every year you were eligible, not just this one.
Once claimed, the allowance transfers automatically each year while you still qualify, so you keep saving without reapplying.
All the forms, calculations and correspondence handled on your behalf, so you never have to decode HMRC's rules or sit on hold.
A clear fixed fee quoted after a free call, your position explained in plain English, and never a surprise bill.
We act quickly, and where earlier years are involved we put those right too, reclaiming refunds or minimising penalties.
Many eligible couples never claim Marriage Allowance simply because they do not know it exists, and beware of claims firms that take a large cut of the refund. We make an accurate claim and you keep the full saving.
Recent Client Outcome
A retired client with a small pension below the personal allowance, married to a basic-rate taxpayer, had never heard of the Marriage Allowance.
What we did. We confirmed both qualified across several years, arranged the transfer of £1,260 of the retiree's unused allowance to their spouse, and backdated the claim four years.
The outcome. The couple received a backdated lump sum of over £1,000, plus £252 a year going forward, all from an allowance that was simply sitting unused.
It cost them nothing to rearrange, and we set a yearly check so the claim stays valid as their incomes change.
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