to think the marriage allowance is an unfair tax allowance

[chomalungma]

It's going to be a thing over the next few weeks.

The Conservatives introduced it - in the coalition. I think the Lib Dems accepted it so they could get free school meals as well.

Great if you're married. You don't need to have kids to get it. Just be married.

If you aren't married, then you don't get it. Even though the money could be handy if you are in a couple.

Or if it didn't exist, then the money could be used to go towards education, Sure Start, the NHS, relationship counselling...all things that help ALL families instead of married couples.

Angela Rayner struggled to answer that question on Marr this morning whereas Corbyn gave a clear answer - stating it was discriminatory.

I think it will come up in the election campaign.

Is it unfair?

Retired married couple here. My husband was self employed, had started a private pension, but serious ill health put paid to his earning a decent income from his forties onwards. He worked until after retirement age, but never earned enough to have another pension. His private pension was eaten up by charges as he couldn't continue to pay into it.

I built up a modest occupational pension, but my state pension is less than the basic. No NI credits in the 70s for looking after children! Low earning work for a while meant I paid reduced NI, again no contributions to state pension. My income now is above the personal tax allowance, by around £1500. My husbands is below. So we do the transfer.

If I hadn't scrimped to pay into a pension, we'd get Pension Credit, Council Tax benefit, Cold Weather payments. As it is, we're marginally over the limit for all of those, so a few quid off our income tax bill feels reasonable to me. We pay 100% of our council tax, unlike our high earning, single, next door neighbour who gets a 25% discount.

Lots of tax and benefits rules seem unfair, depends on one's situation at the time.

My husband is disabled and has low taxable income, I work. I get the married allowance, in the old days our incomes would have been added together and joint allowances taken off, we'd have been much better off

I'm married but we don't get it. You both have to be in 20% bracket.

@TrainspottingWelsh
So in all families where a parent stays at home its because they CHOOSE that? Not because the cost of childcare is prohibitive, especially during school holidays? Childcare would cost me £16 an hour in the holidays, I earn £8.21 an hour so yes, I choose to work a zero hours contract part time otherwise it wouldn't be worth me working. If my husband can claim a measly £250 for us being married then I fail to see how it makes a significant impact to you

If we were applying it to occupations, it would be very sexist to refuse to employ (or to put any barriers in the way of) a woman as a builder or a man as a beauty therapist, but, if everybody is given the free, unrestricted choice, you can't call the result sexist by virtue of the fact that you end up with far more female beauticians and far more male brickies.

Really liked your post sausage. Too many women assume that not 50/50 is always caused by sexism when it is simply what people choose.

Thank you kitten weaning for answering the OPs question to me about mat benefits. You wrote it much better than I could have! I am of same view as you.

No, one of you has to be in the 20% bracket and one of you below it. If you're both in the 20% bracket you won't qualify.

Also, I doubt I'm the only one who thinks the cricitism of this policy as aimed at encouraging one partner not to work is very out of touch with just how many people work and still earn below the personal allowance. The personal allowance is £12,500 and you can transfer a maximum of £1250. It's also possible to earn less but for ease of working let's look at the maximum. This means someone who earns £11,250 a year could potentially qualify. There are millions of workers in the country earning less than that. It's 26 hours a week NMW. It's well above SMP unless your 6 weeks at 90% are very high, which by definition you cannot get if you've not been working, and which is all the majority of women in the UK get. And MA too.

I do understand the argument that it's unfair, money would be better spent elsewhere etc, and it's not something I would ever have introduced. But some of the other claims being made are pretty dubious.

If we had a benefits system that genuinely could be relied on for low incomes, I'd be in favour of double tax and ni for couples where only one chooses to work.. That is a terrible idea Trainspotting.

Say you have a couple. One not working or working very little due to disability or being a carer or being a uni student Their partner works full time and earns the median U.K. salary of £27,500. They pay £3k in income tax and £2,264 in NI for take home pay of £22,236. If you double their tax and NI, to £6k and £4,528 or £10,528. That is a penalty of £428 each month!
They only have £16,972 take home pay. Much less than a single person despite needing to house and feed at least two and potentially any children. You are talking about a penalty for being in a couple (married or unmarried or both? Not sure as you only said couples).

To my mind, almost doubling the personal allowance over a 5 year period was far more unfair than the tiny mitigation of the unfairness via the marriage allowance transfer.

It is equally valid for non earning spouses to point out the increases to the personal allowance could have been much more fairly targeted. Since those without caring responsibilities have much more flexibility around their working hours it is obvious that they have benefited from this most at the expense of low earning families subject to the benefits freeze.

Also, I doubt I'm the only one who thinks the cricitism of this policy as aimed at encouraging one partner not to work is very out of touch with just how many people work and still earn below the personal allowance.

A really good point.

My husband works - he doesn't sit at home all day - but the hours he can work are limited by his health, and he can only find NMW jobs since the industry in which he's qualified (and which was thriving in the 1970s when he was an apprentice) has now all but disappeared from the UK and ageism is alive and well in recruitment (he's nearly 60) so the higher paying jobs just aren't there. Thus, he earns less than half of his personal allowance.

I have had my pension stolen from me until i am 66. I was made redundant and not many employers want to take on women my age. Because of the change in pension I will not have enough contributions for a full pension. I currently have a very small private pension and my partner was also made redundant has a personal pension. Between us we manage. However when he gets his state pension next year he will be over the tax threshold. we plan to marry (he asked me 12 years ago just never got around to it). This pittance we can get back in tax when we are married and when he collects his state pension will be very welcome. There was no child care when i was married to my ex. I didn't have enough qualifications to get a well enough paid job in order to pay for child care so i ended up a stay at home mother. The only extra we got was child allowance so please do not begrudge me this!

I'm married but we don't get it. You both have to be in 20% bracket.

No, that's not right, if you're both in the 20% bracket, there is no unused allowance to transfer, so pointless. The whole point is that a spouse whose income doesn't use all their tax free allowance can transfer a small amount of it to their spouse who does earn over the personal allowance.

To my mind, almost doubling the personal allowance over a 5 year period was far more unfair

How can it be unfair - it benefits workers who earn more than £12k and is basically paid for by those earning over £100k who lose their personal allowance. Surely it's better for lower earners to pay less or no tax? Not seeing the unfairness at all here.

user it is paid for by the freeze to working age benefits and cuts like the increase to your State pension age. Before it was raised for everyone people earning £100k didn't get the increase to have it clawed back. There are very few of them (approx 1% of workers) so the clawback is a drop in the bucket in terms of the cost.

Would you rather have had your state pension earlier or your DH pay slightly less tax on his private pension? Then transfer that to 8 years CB and TC freeze and cuts to ESA and Widows benefit all to finance a tax cut for the FT working masses (far more likely to be male)

Labour deserves to be slammed for it because it exposes their lie that only the top 5% are going to suffer tax hikes to pay for their spending splurge. Apparently middle-income couples are the new super-rich according to them hmm

My husband has state and teacher's pension; he pays tax. My income is below the personal allowance so I can give some of it to him. Our total income is in the region of £20k, hardly top 5%, and if the allowance is abolished we will pay more tax. There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about the allowance. It benefits low income couples.

cuts like the increase to your State pension age

No it's not. State pension age increase was announced long before the transferrable personal allowance and saves a huge amount more than the personal allowance transfer costs. Two completely different things.

There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about the allowance. It benefits low income couples.

As seen on this thread - lots of people havn't a clue about how it works.

gran yy, it's unfair that your neighbour and any other single household doesn't get a 50% council tax reduction.

tessa so you think a single parent on the same salary as your dp and paying for childcare should pay more tax than him, even though he's in theory contributing on behalf of you both? Or the childless single person that is taking far less from the system than a couple with dc should pay more tax than you both do combined.

And on a personal level, no, it makes no odds to me. Just like benefits, the nhs, education etc don't. It doesn't mean I can't see the unfairness for others, or that I'm not allowed an opinion on it.

plan I've never heard of anyone that chooses to be disabled or for a loved one to require care. Uni students are different, but as they will be presumably paying more tax in future than they would without a degree they can be left out of it. Which brings us back to choosing not to work.

From your example, if £5.5k is deemed as a fair contribution for Kate towards the general pot, why is it fair for Jane and John to only contribute that between them? Why should John's use of all publicly funded services be subsidised by everyone else when only Jane is able to actively decide that she's happy to support John?

As I said, only if there was a reliable benefits system so nobody is left living close to the breadline as in your example.

I suppose the other alternative would be halving tax and ni, so Jane and John pay £5.5k and Kate pays £2.75k. But essentially I believe we need a system where everyone able to contributes. So yes, I think if person A is financially supporting B through choice, that should also include B's moral duty to contribute.

And yes, I mean couples rather than just married.

I know of someone who got married just to claim it.But then how much it costs to get married probably swallowed up now much extra she woulda got anyway.

I think it's unfair and should be scrapped.

It depends how much you spend getting married and how long you're going to keep claiming it I guess! Pays for itself pretty quickly if you take the cheapest option, not so much if you do it in a castle.

I know of someone who got married just to claim it.But then how much it costs to get married probably swallowed up now much extra she woulda got anyway.

The formalities are pretty cheap to have a civil partnership. If people choose to have fancy events, that's their choice, but it can be done very cheaply.

Trainspotting, perhaps a local income tax would be fairer than the current system of council tax!

Viviane, are you really saying someone based their reason for marriage on a £5 a week tax break? Thats about the maximum a married couple benefit from the transfer of personal allowances.

Viviane, are you really saying someone based their reason for marriage on a £5 a week tax break? Thats about the maximum a married couple benefit from the transfer of personal allowances.

Of course there are plenty of other reasons for marriage/civil partnerships, some tax related, some not. EG, a married/civilly partnered couple can transfer assets between them without CGT as such transfers are CGT exempt. There's no IHT upon death for assets left to a spouse/civil partner. There's less need to make a will if you're married or civilly partnered. Those are just 3 examples off the top of my head. A fiver per week on it's own, probably not a main driver, but added to other benefits, then probably worth doing with such a short pay back period.

It could just accurately be described as a tax on unmarried people. The question is why should single people carry a burden that married people avoid to incentivise marriage? I don't believe government should be influencing people's personal choices at the expense of others.

@dontalltalkatonce

If you want the benefits of being married, get married. Really do not want to see anything approaching 'common law' marriage, that's discriminatory against those who want to live together but keep finances and inheritance totally separate. The law doesn't need changing - shack up all you want, but if you want the benefits of getting married you need to get married.

It shouldn't be a benefit of being married.it is not fair on single people and it could just as accurately be described as a tax on unmarried people. The question is why should single people carry a burden that married people avoid to incentivise marriage? I don't believe government should be trying to influence people's personal choices especially at the expense of others.