Did Revenue make a mistake?

boatbuilder

Just got Revenue to do a "year of marraige review" and I'm very disappointed with the results to say the least.

I earned a fair bit in 2008 so was expecting a hefty refund, but only got €200. I was expecting more like €2000.

We were married in July 2008. My wife moved over from the UK and got a PPS number at the start of August.

The only thing the revenue did in their review was to give a "year of marriage tax credit" of around a thousand euro. They didn't give me ANY increased cut off point, which meant I was paying 41% tax !

Totally pissed off about this as I don't think its fair at all. Can't find any written down rules about this particular set of circumstances, so I presume the revenue just make it up as they go along (resulting in them refunding as little tax as possible)

namenotavailablE

Did they provide a breakdown of how the refund was determined?

The basic mechanics of this are as follows:

1. Calculate the tax of each person for the full year as 2 single individuals.
2. Calculate the tax of the couple for the full year on the basis of married & jointly assessed
3. [Assuming step 1 value > step 2 value] Refund a fraction of the difference, the fraction being number of months of marriage/12 (and the month of marriage counts as a full month, so if married in July the fraction would be 6/12)

You should check with the Revenue Commissioners if the step 2 values are correct- it's possible that they may have used incorrect SRCOP and tax credit values when doing that calculation.

boatbuilder

No, they didn't provide any breakdown of the calculation, just that €1054 was given as a "year of marriage tax credit". It would be simple if we were both Irish citizens for the entire year, but my wife only came over here after we got married in July.

I phoned the Revenue this morning and after being passed to a few different people, none of them could tell me what increase in cut-off point I was entitled to as a result of being married (if any). They took my phone number and said they would check it out.

So...fingers crossed!

Best case scenario is that I get the full married COP for the entire year.
Worst case scenario is that I only get the single person's COP.

boatbuilder

Ok, so the Revenue phoned me this morning and they re-did the calculation and they owe me an extra €500.

Turns out that they do a "calculation" for your year of marraige and they show that benefit to you as an extra tax credit. So for example even though their statement shows you paying 41% tax, the extra tax credit makes up for that.

So, if in doubt, it pays to ring them to get them to check their calculations.

boatbuilder

Got a nice surprise waiting for me in the post box today.... two nice refund cheques from the revenue.

They only emailed me the "statements" to my ros inbox yesterday so well done Revenue!