Transfer of the personal Allowance for Married Couples and Civil Partnerships

If you have the tax code letter M or N after the number in your tax code notification then these two letters are linked as it means that you  have either transferred or have received a transfer of the 10% personal allowance to/from your partner.

The marriage transfer allowance was introduced so that those who did not pay tax on their earnings up to the full personal allowance, could transfer 10% of their allowance to their partner (as long as their partner was only paying basic rate tax).

So, for example if your tax code for 2018/19 is 1304M that means that your partner has transferred 10% of their personal allowance to you (amounting to £1,185).

This 10% is added on to your personal allowance of £11,850, giving you a total personal allowance of £13,035 (the figures are rounded for the tax code).

Conversely, if your tax code is 1066N then that is likely to be because you have volunteered to give up 10% of your personal allowance to transfer over to your partner who can make use of it. You can do this if you don’t use all of your personal allowance.

This is worked out by taking £1,185 away from £11,850, thus giving you a personal allowance of £10,665 (figures are rounded).

(The above figures are based on amounts for the 2018/19 tax year.)

If you believe that your tax code is wrong then you should contact HMRC on 0300 200 3300.

Letter L

When you are given a tax code it will consist of some numbers followed by a letter.

The number will indicate how much personal allowance you can have in the relevant tax year and the letter gives you more information about how that number was arrived at.

In the case of the letter L, this is the most common letter used as it is given to those people who are entitled to the standard personal allowance.

If you are assigned the letter L at the end of your tax code then it is likely that you have pretty simple tax affairs.

In order to work out the amount of personal allowance that you are are entitled to you will need to multiply the number by 10 to get the actual figure.

So for example, if your tax code is 1150L then you multiply 1150 by 10 and you get a personal allowance of £11,500 (which is the standard personal allowance for the tax year 2017/18).

If you believe that your tax code is wrong then you can ring HMRC on 0300 200 3300.