Married People: Tax Allowances

(asked on 19th March 2019) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much funding his Department has allocated to the married couple's allowance in each of the next three financial years.


Answered by
Mel Stride Portrait
Mel Stride
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
This question was answered on 27th March 2019

HMRC publishes the estimated cost of the Married Couples Allowance (MCA) for the years up to the current tax year in their “Estimated costs of principal tax reliefs” publication, available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/main-tax-expenditures-and-structural-reliefs

The estimated cost of the MCA is:

£m

2013-14

2014-15

2015-16

2016-17

2017-18

2018-19

345

330

290

240

195

165

In 2018-19 there are estimated to be around 270,000 claimants of MCA. HMRC does not hold estimates of the total number of married couples. Reliable estimates of the numbers in receipt of MCA are not available at local authority or constituency level due to insufficient sample size.

The published estimates are based on the 2015-16 Survey of Personal Incomes projected using economic assumptions consistent with the OBR’s October 2018 Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

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