What is the difference between Married Couple's Allowance and Marriage Allowance?

Full answer

These two similarly-named reliefs are frequently confused, but they apply to almost entirely different groups of people and work in different ways. **Marriage Allowance -- the modern, widely available relief** Marriage Allowance (introduced in 2015) lets a lower-earning spouse or civil partner transfer £1,260 of unused Personal Allowance to their partner, worth up to £252 a year, available to any married couple or civil partnership meeting the income conditions (broadly, one partner earning under the Personal Allowance and the other a basic rate taxpayer), regardless of age. **Married Couple's Allowance -- the older, age-restricted relief** Married Couple's Allowance is a much older relief that continues only for couples where at least one spouse or civil partner was born before 6 April 1935 -- it is not available to younger couples at all, regardless of their income levels, since it was closed to new claims from younger age groups long ago and now only applies to a shrinking number of older couples. **How Married Couple's Allowance is calculated** Unlike Marriage Allowance (a fixed £1,260 transfer), Married Couple's Allowance is calculated as a percentage (10%) of a specific allowance figure that itself depends on the higher-income partner's income, subject to a minimum and maximum amount -- it is means-tested against the higher earner's income in a way Marriage Allowance is not, and can be reduced (tapered) if that partner's income exceeds a set threshold, though never below a guaranteed minimum amount. **Can a couple claim both?** No -- a couple cannot claim both Marriage Allowance and Married Couple's Allowance at the same time, since Married Couple's Allowance is generally more valuable where it applies (given the qualifying age), a couple eligible for both would virtually always choose Married Couple's Allowance instead of Marriage Allowance. **Worked example** A couple where the husband was born in 1933 (before the 6 April 1935 cut-off) and the wife was born in 1936 qualifies for Married Couple's Allowance based on the husband's birth date, even though the wife herself was born after the cut-off -- only one spouse needs to meet the age condition for the couple to qualify. A different couple, both born in 1960, cannot claim Married Couple's Allowance at all regardless of their income, but could potentially claim the standard Marriage Allowance instead if their income levels meet its separate conditions. **Why this matters less over time** Because the qualifying birth date is fixed at before 6 April 1935, the pool of people who can ever claim Married Couple's Allowance only shrinks over time as this generation ages, and eventually the relief will become obsolete entirely, unlike Marriage Allowance which remains available to new claimants of any age going forward. **Practical tip** Check both partners' birth dates against the 6 April 1935 cut-off before assuming which relief applies -- if neither partner was born before that date, only the standard Marriage Allowance (with its own separate income conditions) can potentially apply, not Married Couple's Allowance.

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