Married in July, use new wife's tax credits?

boatbuilder

Hi,
I have a tricky situation that I'm trying to get my head around.

I got married in July 2009 and my wife moved over from the UK to Ireland at that time and got herself a PPS number. She has not worked at all because we had a baby pretty much straight away and she brought her other 10 year old son with her, who we are getting child benefit for.

Anyhow, most of my income is from a PAYE job, but I also have a side-business and am registered as a sole trader as well and registered for VAT.

As it stands, I have been taxed as a single person for 2009; I have not told revenue yet that I'm married. I think I was just about in the higher tax bracket.

I have the accounts done for the sole trader part of my income, which shows a small profit of about 5000 euros.

But I also want to take advantage of my wife's tax credits for 2009? Can i do this considering she moved over and got her PPS number here in the July and has not worked at all?

If I can, can I use her entire year's worth of tax credit, or just a portion of it to correspond with the months July-December 09?

Would I be correct to assume that I can add her tax credits to mine as follows?

1- Double my single persons credit
3- Home carer's tax credit

What would my cut-off point be?

And can this all be entered to the revenue's online system?

Thanks for your help.

David

Victor

In normal circumstances, I think you could, but your circumstances are slightly more complicated than normal, so I suggest you investigate it thoroughly, whether with an accountant or directly with Revenue.

DoMyBooks

Hi David,

As you are self employed you should be filling all of this in on your form 11. There's space for your spouses details on that.

The tax in year of marriage is slightly unusual as you are both taxed as single and then you can claim a refund if the marriage has made a difference. Its all here on IT2



http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/leaflets/it2.html

boatbuilder

Thanks for your help.

Well, I phoned Revenue and they explained how I should fill in form 11 as a single person, and then request a review of that year to take account of my marriage.

So I went ahead and submitted form 11 using ROS (God bless medical expenses!)

I still don't know exactly how much tax credits or COP my wife will get though for that year, since she only got her PPS number in August of that year. I'm hoping she gets a full year's worth, but I can't find any info anywhere on this.

I suppose I'll just have to wait and see what the revenue's review comes up with.

Anyone know how long it takes the revenue to process things these days? Are they on a go-slow like a lot of other places?

boatbuilder

Its over a month now since I made my application for a review of 2008 and I've heard nothing from revenue.....

Frank McGivney

the revenue have a back log of 6 to 8 weeks alot of the time processing requests so a month is not unusual. But I woul ring them just to confirm that they received your correspondance looking for a review. All documents they recevie are scanned in an they will be able to confirm they receive it

Mr. Incognito

Your wife will be non resident for the year so will not be entitled to credits.

However you will want to apply for split year treatment that treats her as a resident with the intention that she will be resident the following year.

This will give you an increased standard rate cut off and her personal credit.

This will be apportioned from the date of marriage.