Tax as single or separate when you are marriage couple?

civilathanasiou

Hello everyone

i am on a yearly contract 55000 fixed and my girl is on 46500+overtimes.

I don’t know how to get taxed as couple or separate. With the maths I am doing I see that as couple we getting less salary as couple. How is that possible.

can you tell me your opinion and how to decide what to do?

Kimbot

If you are married then you have to pay at the married rate and not the single rate.

Furze99

Maybe it's changed but I thought married couples can choose whether to be tax jointly or separately - so called McCreevy tax individualisation etc.

If so, my read on it is that better to be taxed jointly if one persons salary is notably greater than the others. So all the tax credits go to the higher earner. But if incomes are similar as above, not a huge benefit and may as well be taxed individually.

kippy

You can be jointly assessed or individually assessed however based on my knowledge of this for your specific incomes there would be no difference to the overall net income.

The difference comes when one person isn't working or on an income lower than 40K (based on the recent tax changes). The lower the income the larger the benefit.

A bit more here:

https://www.revenue.ie/en/life-events-and-personal-circumstances/marital-status/marriage-and-civil-partnerships/joint-assessment.aspx#:~:text=Joint%20assessment%20allows%20you%20to,the%20Employee%20Tax%20Credit

Spear

Moved to a forum that's actually related to the topic instead.

relax carry on

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058278005/tax-as-single-or-separate-when-you-are-marriage-couple

You can opt to be taxed jointly if you wish but it will have no benefit to you currently as you are both using your full allocation of standard rate bands and tax credits as it is. It will also not be detrimental to you as you can just sign up be jointly assessed and leave everything split 50/50.

https://www.revenue.ie/en/life-events-and-personal-circumstances/marital-status/marriage-and-civil-partnerships/joint-assessment.aspx

appledrop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120060108#Comment_120060108

This is incorrect, you can choose to be assessed individually when your married.

OP if you both earn over higher tax band which you do absolutely no benefit of being taxed as a married couple.

Down the road if you have kids and one of you took say 6 mths unpaid parental leave etc then it would be worth looking at but not as moment.