Marriage Allowance Explained

What is Marriage Allowance?

Marriage Allowance is a tax break for married couples and civil partners where one partner earns too little to use all of their tax-free Personal Allowance. It lets the lower earner give up part of their unused allowance and pass it to their partner, so the couple pays less tax overall. It exists because the Personal Allowance is given to each individual, and if one person cannot use all of theirs, some of that tax-free entitlement would otherwise be wasted. The allowance is transferred as a fixed amount, not a percentage of your actual income, so the saving is the same whether the lower earner has no income at all or earns just under the threshold.

How much you can transfer and save

You can transfer a fixed 10 percent of the standard Personal Allowance to your partner. With the Personal Allowance at £12,570 for 2026/27, that fixed transfer is £1,260, rounded to the nearest £10. Your partner then gets that £1,260 added to their own tax-free allowance, so £1,260 of their income that would have been taxed at the 20% basic rate is now tax free. That is where the headline saving of up to £252 a year comes from, because 20% of £1,260 is £252. The exact saving can be slightly less in the first year if you do not transfer for the full tax year, but in a normal full year an eligible couple saves the full £252.

Who can claim Marriage Allowance

To claim, all of the following must apply. You must be married or in a civil partnership, as simply living together does not qualify. One partner must be a non-taxpayer, meaning their income is below the £12,570 Personal Allowance, or otherwise not using all of it. The other partner must be a basic rate taxpayer, which for 2026/27 generally means taxable income between £12,571 and £50,270, so they pay tax at 20%. If the higher earner pays tax at the 40 percent higher rate or the 45 percent additional rate, the couple is not eligible, with a limited exception in Scotland explained below. Both partners must have been born on or after 6 April 1935, as couples where one partner was born before that date may be better off claiming the separate Married Couple's Allowance instead.

Marriage Allowance in Scotland

Because Scotland sets its own income tax bands, the rule for the higher earning partner is based on the Scottish bands rather than the rest of the UK ones. In practice, to claim Marriage Allowance the recipient partner in Scotland must be paying tax at the starter, basic, or intermediate rate. Someone paying the Scottish higher, advanced, or top rate cannot benefit. You can read more about how the Scottish bands work in our guide to Scottish income tax at /blog/scottish-income-tax-uk/.

How to apply, for free

The most important thing to know is that you apply directly to HMRC for free, and you should never pay a third party company a fee to do it for you. The lower earning partner, the one giving up part of their allowance, is the one who makes the application. You can apply online through your Personal Tax Account on the official GOV.UK website, or by contacting HMRC. You will need both partners' National Insurance numbers and a way to confirm your identity. Once the claim is in place, HMRC usually changes the recipient partner's tax code so the benefit is given automatically, and it then carries forward to future years until you cancel it, so you only need to apply once.

Backdating a claim

If you were eligible in earlier years but never claimed, you can backdate your claim by up to four tax years, as long as you met the conditions in each of those years. This can turn into a useful lump sum, because four years of backdated allowance plus the current year can add up to over a thousand pounds in total refunds. When you apply, you simply indicate the earlier years you want to include, and HMRC works out any refund due for the past years, usually paid directly to you, while the current year is given through your tax code.

When to cancel or when it changes

Marriage Allowance continues automatically each year, so you should review it if your circumstances change. You need to cancel or update the claim if you divorce or dissolve the civil partnership, if your relationship ends, or if the lower earner's income rises so that they now need their full Personal Allowance, or if the higher earner's income rises into the higher rate band. If a partner dies, the allowance can still apply for that year and the rules differ depending on who claimed, so it is worth checking with HMRC. Cancelling is done through HMRC, and the change normally applies from the start of the next tax year unless the relationship has ended, in which case it can be backdated to the start of the tax year.

How it fits with the rest of your tax

Marriage Allowance is one of several ways couples and individuals reduce tax, and it works alongside your other allowances rather than replacing them. To see your overall position, our income tax calculator at /tax/income-tax-calculator/ shows how the Personal Allowance and the bands apply to your income, and our guide to tax codes at /blog/tax-codes-explained-uk/ explains the letters you may see on your payslip once a Marriage Allowance claim changes your code, such as an M or an N suffix.