Married: Tax Credits (very complex case)

ConCoBar

Hi,

My wife and I got married in July 2015 and she has moved from NI to ROI since that date. I'm a secondary teacher and she is primary but works subbing in NI as she's nothing permanent. She has transferred her national insurance credits to ROI the day after legally moving from NI to ROI and they came through around the last week of November so she can get her jobseekers based on her previous NI stamps. It took a lot of paperwork but finally got all sorted and keeps her stamps topped up. She works around 60% of the school year and earned around £14,000 last year.

She still works in NI as a sub primary teacher (we live right on the border) while I work in ROI. We've handed in our forms to the tax office but he said we can do anything with tax credits until 2016 anyway.

Our dilemma:
We've no idea how tax credits work in NI. Since she works only part-time, is she best transferring her credits in ROI to me? She gets jobseekers in ROI now for when she doesn't work. Are we best going for a joint assessment for tax or as single? Or, has anyone got any tips on how to best approach it. Again, she still works in NI and the Dept. of Education in UK sign her forms to say what days she has work. She's classed as cross border worker.

We don't want to set it up so that we are down money or pay the wrong amount of tax and never get to claim it back. We'd like to get it right from the word go so we can continue with this setup.


Cheers folks,

SRASE

You are likely to be better off to be jointly assessed but you would need to go through the figures of all your income to be sure.