Marriage Allowance

How a spouse or civil partner can transfer unused Personal Allowance to save the couple up to £252 a year

If you're married or in a civil partnership and one of you isn't using all of your tax-free Personal Allowance, you can transfer some of it to your partner, reducing their tax bill by up to £252 a year. It's a genuine "quick win": once you're eligible, there's no reason not to claim, and it's often missed simply because most people assume tax allowances can't be shared between partners.

How it works

The lower-earning partner (the transferor) can give up £1,260, a fixed 10% of the standard £12,570, to the higher-earning partner (the recipient). Both of you need to meet a condition:

The transferor must pay no Income Tax, meaning their income is at or below the standard £12,570.
The recipient must be a basic-rate taxpayer: income between £12,570 and £50,270. If their income reaches the higher-rate band, they no longer qualify.

It applies equally to civil partnerships, not just marriages. It's worth being clear about when it doesn't apply, too: two partners who both earn a full salary get no benefit from Marriage Allowance at all, since neither of them has spare Personal Allowance to transfer. See the young couple in Family & Household Examples, each on £50,000, for an example. In the UK, two incomes are simply taxed completely independently unless one partner specifically has unused allowance to give away.

Once HMRC processes a claim, both partners' tax codes change to record it: the recipient gets an M suffix (e.g. 1383M, the standard code plus the transferred amount), and the transferor gets an N suffix (e.g. 1131N, the standard code minus it). See Understanding Your Tax Code for the other letters you might see.

Worked example: claiming Marriage Allowance

Say one partner earns £11,500 a year and the other earns £20,000, the lower earner is comfortably under the standard Personal Allowance, and the higher earner is a basic-rate taxpayer.

The lower earner transfers £1,260 of their Personal Allowance, leaving them with £11,310 tax-free instead of the standard £12,570.
Because £11,500 is £190 more than their new, smaller allowance, they now owe tax on that slice: an extra £38 for the year.
The higher earner's allowance rises by the same £1,260, cutting their tax bill by £252.

Net effect for the couple: £252 saved on one side, £38 paid on the other, for a combined saving of £214 a year, less than the £252 maximum, because the lower earner wasn't that far under the standard allowance to begin with.

Check what it would save you

Enter both partners' incomes to check whether you're eligible for Marriage Allowance, and how much it would actually save you as a couple.

Lower-earning partner's income£Higher-earning partner's income£

Eligible. Transferring £1,260 of Personal Allowance saves this couple £214 a year.

That's less than the £252 maximum, because the lower earner's own allowance shrinks too. They now owe £38 in tax they didn't before.

If you're a Scottish taxpayer: this calculator uses the England/Wales/Northern Ireland basic-rate threshold throughout, which can show "eligible" for some Scottish taxpayers who aren't. See the note on Scottish thresholds below before relying on a result.

It doesn't always save the full amount

£252 is a maximum, not a guarantee; it's worth understanding this before you assume the headline figure applies to your own numbers. It only holds in full when the transferor's income is comfortably below the standard £12,570 and the recipient's own tax bill was already at least £252 to begin with. If the transferor's income is close to the standard allowance, giving away £1,260 means part of what they're transferring was actually being used, so they start owing some tax themselves, eating into the couple's overall saving. That part alone can only bring the saving down to £0, not below it.

But there's a second, easy to miss effect on the recipient's side. Marriage Allowance's benefit to them is legally a "tax reduction". It can only ever reduce their bill to zero, never below it, so it can never refund tax they didn't actually owe. If the recipient's own income is only just above the standard Personal Allowance, their pre-transfer tax bill might be far smaller than £252, and unlike the transferor's side, nothing caps their extra tax. Combine a transferor right at the standard allowance with a recipient only just into the basic rate, and the couple can end up worse off, not merely no better off.

Worked example: when it costs you money

Say the lower earner's income is exactly the standard £12,570 Personal Allowance, still eligible to transfer, since they pay no tax at their own income, and the higher earner's income is just £1 above it, at £12,571.

The higher earner's own tax bill, before any transfer, is only £0.20, £1 of income above their allowance, taxed at the basic rate. The transfer can only reduce that £0.20 to zero. It can't go below it, however much allowance is transferred.
The lower earner's allowance still shrinks by the full £1,260, and none of that is capped: they now owe an extra £252.

Net effect for the couple: only £0.20 saved on one side, £252 paid on the other, a loss of £251.80, not the £0 "worst case" the headline maximum might suggest.

Backdating and how to apply

Only the transferor (the lower earner) can make the claim, online via gov.uk. The recipient can't apply on their own behalf. Claims can be backdated up to four tax years (currently back to 2022/23) for any year you were eligible but didn't claim, which can mean a useful lump sum the first time you apply. Once claimed, it renews automatically every year until either of you cancels it or your circumstances change. You don't need to reapply annually.

If you divorce, dissolve a civil partnership, or legally separate, you need to cancel it. HMRC can backdate the cancellation to the start of the tax year, which may mean a tax adjustment for both of you.

Note: this is a different, newer scheme from Married Couple's Allowance, an older and more generous relief only available where one partner was born before 6 April 1935. If that applies to you, check Married Couple's Allowance on gov.uk instead. The two can't both be claimed for the same couple.

Already have an M or N tax code?

If HMRC has already processed a claim and your payslip shows a code like 1383M or 1131N, you can enter it directly into the Salary Calculator's tax code field to see its effect on your take-home pay. It's read the same way as any other code.

If you're a Scottish taxpayer, the recipient threshold is different

Everything above uses the England/Wales/Northern Ireland basic-rate band: £12,570 to £50,270. Scotland has its own Income Tax bands (see Scottish Income Tax Explained), and Marriage Allowance eligibility follows them: a Scottish recipient can be on the starter, basic, or intermediate rate: income between £12,570 and £43,662, not the higher £50,270 figure used elsewhere on this page. Once a Scottish recipient's income reaches the higher rate, they stop qualifying, the same way a recipient elsewhere in the UK does at their own, different threshold. The transferor-side rules and the £252 maximum are unaffected. Only the recipient's upper income limit changes. The calculator above uses the England/Wales/Northern Ireland threshold throughout; a Scottish reader with a recipient income between £43,662 and £50,270 should treat an "eligible" result from it with caution.

This page explains general Marriage Allowance rules and is not personalised advice; see the disclaimer. Whether claiming makes sense for your household depends on your full circumstances; speak to a qualified financial adviser before making decisions.