Taxation for couples questions

Wizard!

I have been working as a contractor for several years, and I have an accounting company handle all my payments, therefore I have almost no knowledge of how taxation, PAYE, PRSI, USC, etc. work...


I started a permanent job last month and with my payslip I had a shock on how much less I got away... I was expecting to be less, but it was still a shock...


While trying to figure out why it was that much, a friend of mine said that he remembers from few years back, he did something in his Revenue.ie profile, to set himself as the higher income in the family, and that resulted in better net salary... (?). My wife earns the 1/3 of our total income, while mine is 2/3.



Maybe he remembers wrong, maybe there is no difference, but my questions are:


Is there something I need to pay attention so legally I get better taxation?
Any settings in Revenue?
Expenses?

namenotavailablE

Depending on the € value of each income, it is possible to share out your 'standard rate cut off point' between each earner to maximise the net income for each.

You can get a suggested share of the SRCOP using my free spreadsheet available here:

http://taxcalc.eu/monthlyss/SRCOP%20allocation.xlsx

I have a free net pay spreadsheet available there too (uses macros in Excel):

http://taxcalc.eu/monthlyss/Employee%20PAYE%20calculator.xlsm

Other general considerations: depending on your employment, you might qualify for a 'flat rate expense' allowance. See the list of qualifying employments here:

https://www.revenue.ie/en/personal-tax-credits-reliefs-and-exemptions/documents/flat-rate-expenses.pdf

Check your payslip to see if you are being taxed on the 'emergency basis', 'week 1/ month 1' basis or 'normal/ cumulative' basis. You want it to be the 'normal/ cumulative basis'- anything else is temporarily worse until the issue which causes the 'bad basis' is resolved (e.g. you haven't registered your new employee on your Revenue.ie account)

Your typical tax credits (these appear on your payslip, usually at the lower part where calculations are shown) should be €275 per month and typical SRCOP per month is €2941. However, these may differ depending on many factors.