Marriage Allowance: the tax break many couples miss
If one of you earns under the Personal Allowance and the other is a basic-rate taxpayer, you can shift some allowance across and cut your tax by up to £252 a year.
Marriage Allowance is one of those tax breaks that costs nothing to claim, applies to a lot of couples, and is still widely ignored. If it fits your circumstances, it is close to free money, and you can claim it directly from HMRC without paying anyone to do it for you.
How it works
Everyone has a Personal Allowance, the amount they can earn before paying income tax, which is £12,570 for 2026/27. Marriage Allowance lets the lower earner in a married couple or civil partnership transfer 10% of their allowance, which is £1,260, to their partner.
That transferred £1,260 reduces the partner’s taxable income, saving them 20% of it in tax, which comes to up to £252 in a full year. The saving goes to the higher-earning partner, but the couple keeps it either way.
Who qualifies
Three things generally need to be true. You must be married or in a civil partnership; simply living together does not count. One partner must be a non-taxpayer, normally earning below the £12,570 Personal Allowance. And the other partner must be a basic-rate taxpayer, meaning income roughly between £12,571 and £50,270 (the Scottish thresholds differ, so Scottish couples should check the Scottish rules).
The point of the break is that the lower earner is not using all of their allowance, so lending a slice of it to a partner who is paying tax turns wasted allowance into a real saving.
Backdating
This is the part people miss. If you were eligible in earlier years but never claimed, you can backdate a claim by up to four tax years. That can produce a one-off refund on top of the current year’s saving, potentially over a thousand pounds in total. HMRC pays the backdated amount for closed years and adjusts the current year going forward.
How to claim, and a warning
Claim through the official GOV.UK Marriage Allowance service. The non-taxpaying partner normally makes the application, because they are the one giving up part of their allowance. Once set up, it usually renews automatically each year, so you do not have to reapply, though you should cancel it if your circumstances change, for example if the lower earner’s income rises above the allowance.
Be wary of adverts and agents offering to claim Marriage Allowance for you in exchange for a cut of the refund. The official claim is free and takes a few minutes, so there is no reason to hand over a slice of your own money for something you can do yourself. Always check your eligibility and the current figures on GOV.UK before claiming.